Bush's Choice for New Iraqi Flag

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3660663.stm

After the Americans attacked Iraq for dubious reasons and refusing to hand over sovereignty, this is Iraq's new 'inclusive' flag http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3660663.stm

Of course, if they had asked Idiot Bush what his preference would be, he would have loved them to just have an American flag with a little green crescent added among the 50+ white stars! And on the other side of the flag are tonnes of '$$$$' signs.

But may be that is a bit too obvious, hor?

To Make An Italian Hero

What does it take to make one Italian hero?

The gall to go whack a 5,000 year old civilization that refuses to take it sitting down just for money, and the stupidity to remain arrogant even when caught....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3628977.stm
(news report on the killing of Italian hostage by Iraqis, and he supposedly wanted to take off hood just before killing to 'show his captors how an Italian die')

Confirmed: Me & Palestinians Have One More Thing in Common

Pls read AFP report below. Now, we can confirm I do have one more thing in common with the Palestinians.

And sometime in the future, some of us will find among the people that talk to us on this topic, idiots (especially those from certain religions) with no idea of what happened years before wondering aloud why the idiotic Palestinians do not accept whatever the nice Israelis had to offer. Not knowing, of course, that those Palestinians had already been short changed by deals cut years before by some superpower.

As history is only repeating itself, there are already such idiots existing today. If you, like me, know of such people you can help them with some history to present day Palestine: tell them to find out about the history & players surrounding the Balfour Declaration, and the Sykes-Picot and Hussein-MacMahon Agreements done about a hundred years ago by Bush-like idiots from Britain (it is not a coincidence if they have the same religion).

WASHINGTON (AFP) President George W. Bush broke with a decades-old US policy by stating Israel could keepsome Arab land captured in the 1967 war, infuriating Palestinian leaders who condemned the US leader.

Bush signalled the change as he endorsed a plan by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and some West Bank settlements. He caused further controversy by saying Palestinian refugees should not be allowed to land lost to Israel in 1948.

Palestinian premier Ahmed Qorei described Bush's move as unacceptable and in breach of the US-led Middle East peace process.

Bush backed the plan to withdraw from 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank after a White House meeting with the Israeli leader. He hailed Sharon's proposal as "historic and courageous".

A senior Israeli official said the withdrawal would be completed in 2005.

"If all parties choose to embrace this moment they can open the door to progress and put an end to one of the world's longest-running conflicts," said Bush. The president reiterated his support for the "road map" peace blueprint, which calls for the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

But Bush declared that Palestinian refugees from the 1948 upheaval in the region must settle in any new Palestinian state. "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949," he said, referring to large settlements in the West Bank.

The two leaders exchanged letters on Bush's endorsement of the disengagement plan during their meeting, officials said.

In what appeared to be approval of a key Israeli demand, Bush said in a statement that Israel will "retain its right" after any pull-out to strike Palestinian militants in Gaza. The US leader again warned Palestinians that "they must fight terror." "It is very important for a Palestinian state to emerge in which we have confidence, in which any prime minister of Israel has confidence, in which the United States has confidence, that will be a peaceful partner," he said.

But Bush also said the security barrier Israeli is building in the West Bank must not become a permanent construction. "It should be temporary rather than permanent, and therefore not prejudice any final status issues, including final borders."

At a joint press conference with Bush, Sharon was visibly pleased with the results from his ninth visit to the White House since the president took office in January 2001. "I was encouraged by your positive response and your support for my plan," Sharon said.

Washington's endorsement was likely to give Sharon the backing he needs to win a vote in early May on the disengagement plan by his Likud Party. The withdrawal proposal has drawn fierce opposition from right-wingers.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Gaza withdrawal would be completed by an unspecified date in 2005. And Sharon said in his letter to Bush that Israel plans to speed up work on the security barrier in the West Bank, that has faced widespread international criticism, but promised it would be "temporary rather than permanent" in line with Bush's demands. The senior official hailed Bush's comments on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and negating the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel as an historic first. "The United States made unequivocal statements not heard in 56 years," the official told reporters after the White House talks.

The Palestinian premier angrily accused Bush of an "unacceptable" violation of the peace process. "It cannot be decided by the president of the United States what is realistic and what is not realistic," Qorei told reporters at his West Bank offices. "This is a real violation of the road map." Qorei said the borders and the status of refugees must "be decided in negotiations" involving all sides as laid down in the US-backed road map peace plan, which was launched last June.

He also criticised Bush for not demanding that the Israel tear down the separation barrier. "It is not realistic that the Israelis occupy Palestinian territories; it is not realistic that the Israelis build the separation wall on the Palestinian territories." Qorei said he had been let down by the Americans after being told by a group of visiting envoys this month that "the permanent status issues would be negotiated in a permanent status agreement. "Today we are really disappointed," he added.

The Palestinian leadership warned in a statement before the Bush-Sharon meeting that any US endorsement of the disengagement plan would trigger a new cycle of violence. Any deal "would lead to the destruction of any possibility of peace, of stability and security in the region and will launch a new cycle of violence," said the statement.

Sharon has argued that he has no option but to implement his disengagement plan in the absence of a Palestinian negotiating partner, accusing Qorei and his government of not moving to crack down on militants groups who have carried out a string of suicide attacks.

The two prime ministers have not met since Qorei came to office in October and the Palestinian premier ruled out the prospect of talks with Sharon after his visit to Washington. "I do not know what we would have to talk about," he said.

25 Reasons Why Bush is Right

See below AFP report on Bush's claim that comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam are false.

Here may be the reasons why that idiot think that way :

1. One happened in the 20th century, the other in 21st

2. One was started by Truman, the other by Bush

3. One the U.S. continued from immediately where the French left off, the other 40 years after the British left off (hey, if you want to pick on this, remember they had wanted to whack Iraq since 1990 hor)

4. One war started after the US torpedoed elections promised by the French, the other started before the US torpedoed free elections (supposedly because it was not suitable for the country they attacked)

5. One started after they claimed Truman’s military advisers did not do a good enough job, the other after they claimed the UN inspectors did not

6. One was supposedly inspired by ‘evil’ Marx, the other by ‘evils’ Saddam & Osama (see there are 2 evils for this one, so more evil lah)

7. One was against ‘evil’ Communism, the other against ‘evil’ Islamism/terrorism (see, more evils again)

8. One was against ‘illegal’ yellow faced commies, the other ‘illegal’ non-yellow Shites and Sunnis (evil nevertheless)

9. One was whacked supposedly for having WI (wrong idea), the other for having WMD (more evil, the US having more of both notwithstanding)

10. One was conducted with conventional arms, the other by high tech weapons (ha, finally a non evil way of killing those evil fellas)

11. One they managed to get the locals to kill each other, the other they have yet to (see, one was not entirely their fault)

12. Which is why one they managed to get 6 million killed, the other only 30,000 (shucks, what a big difference)

13. And the ‘kill ratio’ for one is 1 of theirs to 100 of everyone else, while the other is worse at 1 to 50 (more disappointment)

14. One made tones of money for the US military complex, the other for that, the oil companies and others like ‘security contractors’ etc. (this makes up for all the disappointments. And you see the beauty of free market? Now, thanks to the ingenuity of America’s businessmen, the world has a new business line called ‘security contracting’. Compare that to the Spaniards 500 years ago when they only had the Conquistadors which is why the Spanish were so happy to go along on this one)

15. One they managed to only destroy, the other they have a chance to stay around after the destruction for ‘rebuilding’ efforts (always mean more money that way)

16. One they have to bluff idiots like my parents, the other they have to bluff idiots like me (ha, they failed on both counts on this one! Even my father, as uneducated as he was, could see through them. In fact, one of my most memorable sight was my old man laughing every time a James Bond or Rambo movie came to town. His comment was: if the Americans had a few of those fellas in Vietnam they would have had it easy)

17. One was shown on TVs by reporters they lost control of, the other by reporters they did not

18. One’s war frenzy was whipped up with the help of the likes of Time magazine, the other by Fox TV

19. One took place before the world of internet, the other after

20. One took the world about 20 years to realize what happened, the other the world realized it 2 years before it happened! (why do you think the French, Germans etc. were against it even before it started?)

21. One they tried to be funny at Mao’s backyard, the other at the Ayatollah’s

22. One they lost, the other they have yet to

23. One ended when their own protesters invaded Washington, the other started when some foreigners with nothing to do with Iraq attacked Washington

24. One the Israelis were not there to cheer about, the other Israeli agents were caught cheering when it happened.

25. One ended shortly after Nixon tried to cheat to stay elected, the other started shortly after Bush cheated to be elected.

You see, everything was so different. Bush is no idiot and he is right (the neo-con type, hor).


WASHINGTON (AFP) President George W. Bush was holding his first press conference of this election year, hoping to reassure Americans after the bloodiest two weeks in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad a year ago.

Bush Tuesday warned against the "unthinkable" consequences of failing to rebuild Iraq and set it on course for democracy, saying that would embolden terrorism worldwide. "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be unthinkable," he told a press conference. "Everyone against America would celebrate, proclaiming our weakness."

Bush also said he would send additional forces to Iraq if needed, and vowed to stand by a plan to transfer Iraq to self-rule on June 30 despite deadly clashes between US-led forces and Shiite and Sunni insurgents.

"On June 30th, Iraqi sovereignty will be placed in Iraqi hands," Bush said in a lengthy opening statement at the start of just his third primetime news conference since taking office in January 2001.

Bush flatly rejected as "false" comparisons between deadly fighting in Iraq and the bloody Vietnam war that bitterly divided the US public.

"I think the analogy is false," he told reporters at just his third prime-time press conference since taking office in January 2001.

"I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and sends a wrong message to the enemy but this is hard work," he added after some commentators and critics raised the specter of Vietnam following the two bloodiest weeks of fighting in Iraq since Baghdad fell a year ago.

Bush warned that radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr must answer the charges against him and disband his illegal militia.

"Al-Sadr must answer the charges againt him and disband his illegal militia," Bush said of al-Sadr, who is believed to be in hiding but has continued to send messages to supporters urging action against the US occupation.

He tied radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose supporters have clashed with US forces in Iraq, to extremist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

In a lengthy opening statement at the third prime-time press conference of his presidency, Bush said al-Sadr led an illegal militia and had in "public supported the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah."

Zhou En Lai's History Lesson

Zhou En Lai (if you don’t know who he was, this story should apply well to you) was once asked how he found the Americans to which he laughed and said that they had no sense of history. Of course, Zhou En Lai was only partly correct. The ones in power in the US do know history. In fact, they know from history what works and practice that to a fine art. One example is the art of war and plunder at others’ expense. Also, Zhou En Lai would probably laugh at the lack of sense of history around the world today despite all the high tech media & communications we claim we have.

For example, do you know what is common between Vietnam, Palestine, and now Iraq?

1. One powerful country whacking another whenever it likes.

2. The powerful one sends its own well armed hooligans to someone else’s homes on their whim to satisfy these men’s bestial instincts and these animals kill up to 10 times their opposite numbers for everyone of them killed. In the meantime, their powerbrokers’ geopolitical objectives are conveniently satisfied.

3. They get their co-conspirators in the media to glorify such animal acts in the name of freedom and all sorts of drummed up heroics, and paint their opposite numbers in bad light by labeling them terrorists, insurgents and enemies (unless, of course, when these fellas are fighting the Russians, Germans or Chinese!)

4. They manage to fool a tonne of idiots in the world who are all too happy to parrot after them, cry for their dead, and are totally impervious to the plight of their opposite numbers. For example, I know of Australians that cry at Washington’s Vietnam War Memorial, and the PM of Singapore organized a crying session in the National Stadium 2 years ago when 2,000 Americans were killed in September 11. But they are no where to be seen when 6 million Vietnamese and 30,000 Iraqis are killed by what the Americans started (but of course, such idiots of this world are usually not aware of this)

5. And they actually succeed in doing so most of the time which pushes
their opposite numbers to greater desperation and to adopt drastic measures against them

6. They then use these drastic reactions from their opposite numbers to justify their doing all the above.

7. The world starts from step 1 above all over again, year after year, decades after decades. Which is why people like me seems to keep harping on the same thing!

If you don’t believe in the above, try this trick: ask your neighbours what they think people like Christopher Columbus are commonly known for versus what history books say they really did. Then see the difference….

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3620109.stm

What Me & Others in Palestine Have in Common

Fifty plus years ago, Japanese forces invaded Malaysia supposedly, among other reasons, to free people like my parents and grandparents from the ‘terrible’ British colonialists. During that occupation, they took away one of my father’s brothers one night and he never returned. No one knew what happened to that poor young man. A couple of years later, the Americans and British whacked the Japs and ‘freed’ (supposedly from the ‘terrible’ Japs as the Brits got to keep their prize) all the Malaysians alive then. And when the Americans through an idiot known as Mac Arthur signed the surrender agreement with the Japs, they agreed that Japan will not be required to account and compensate for everything they did to all the Asians during the war. This was of course very different from Germany which was required to pay war reparations to its European counterparts.

Which is why to this day, you still see old people in China & Korea still try to raise the issue of justice and compensation (if you are not aware of all the above, it’s OK, it is not your fault. Not many people are interested in such trivials).

Perhaps America thought that Asians are more magnanimous than Europeans, or, may be, they thought Asians are idiots that do not deserve a fair settlement for any injustice done to them. Whatever the case, they had the gall to assume that they had the right to decide everything for Asia.

Of course, people like me could never accept such things (forget the past and look ahead, so to speak) and considers America a bastard country while to many other buggers it is a great country with much to teach or offer to the world.

Ha, I sound just like those idiotic Palestinians that can never accept those nice Israelis.

But then I see history repeating itself again and again. Like in this attached report where the Israelis are trying to get the Americans to ‘agree’ to them annexing huge tracts of Palestinian land without bothering with the Palestinians nor the UN. And if those bastard Israelis get their way with the bastard Americans, many buggers in time to come will be wondering why in the name of God can those Palestinians not agree to whatever the nice Israelis have to offer (which is of course always gonna be lesser after the Americans are through with them).

If you are not aware of this, it is OK too. Again, it is not your fault. Perhaps, you do not want to be an idiot like me….

And if you are a Non-Jap Asian, check with your grandma. You never know if you have something in common with those idiotic Palestinians.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/414640.html

Idiots In Common

What is common between the countries forming the 'coalition to free Iraq' and some of the Korean hostages in Iraq?

1. They are idiots 'enlightened' by a certain religion

2. They are there to teach Iraqis the lesson that freedom (like eternal life as these idiots believe) can only be attained by death. That's why killing Iraqis that disagree with them is actually good for 'em Iraqis (so the world shouldn't complain).

3. They are dumbfounded by the stupidity of the Iraqis who do not seem to appreciate these idiots' divine efforts. That's why such Iraqis are terrorists that should be terminated.

4. They are there for selfish reasons including plundering and making tonnes of money without having to submit to free market forces that their idiot leader a.k.a. Bush a.k.a. the US preach to others.

5. They think the whole world is full of idiots that don't know what they are up to.

6. All the above

Spanish Hour of Bush-like Idiots

Here goes a group of Bush-like idiots that think they can get away with whacking & plundering others based on drummed up excuses...

(attached BBC report on lost of power of Spanish conservative government that supported Iraq attack after massive rail train bombings in Madrid that killed about 200 people blamed on Islamic militants from Morroco)http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3511280.stm

Heavenly Hour of the Idiots

My country Malaysia has its constitutionally required elections once every four years or so. As usual, the political parties get one week to nominate their candidates and another week to campaign. This year, voting day is 21 March which is the Formula 1 race day at Sepang. Like the fast car race which means it is all over in a matter of hours, it is understandable that Malaysia’s political ‘leaders’ will try their best to make the most bang for themselves in the most efficient manner. That is why we Malaysians again have the opportunity to witness another “hour of the political idiots”. However to my memory, this must be the zenith. In fact, this time their hour should be known as the “Heavenly Hour of the Idiots”. And here is why.

According to PAS, everyone that voted for them will get to go to heaven. If these idiots are to be believed, that would mean that god has lost control of the gates of heaven (perhaps he learnt from the Americans and started practicing democracy but lost out to PAS in a heavenly contest), and those generous idiots had lowered the price of tickets to heaven. And voters that believe PAS should die soon enough to maximize their enjoyment of the pleasures of heaven (hey, no need to even go to Mecca and throw pebbles!). Heck, that’s good news for people like me, it just means thousands of idiots lesser in this world! People like me also wonder why the PAS leaders are still on this unholy earth given their supreme holiness and new-found control but we soon learn not to quibble with supreme idiots.

And according to MCA, a vote for them means striking a lottery. The MCA idiots probably meant to describe themselves and the money that will line their own pockets when they get to power, rather than that of the voters. But heck, who cares? Their supporters are as stupid as them anyway. Like someone once said, the greatest thing about democracy is that it makes sure that a country do not get a government better than it deserves!

So you know what non-idiots should do in this election? They should cast one vote for MCA in the parliamentary elections, and one for PAS in the state elections. Hey, this way they cover all corners. Good money on earth and a ticket to heaven when their luck on earth runs out – that is if PAS & MCA are not bluffing! And if those PAS and MCA idiots prove to be liars, Malaysia will still not be a living hell full of PAS-like idiots running the country at the parliamentary level, and we can always bribe the MCA parliamentary idiots to stuff those PAS state idiots! Hey, what a deal made in heaven!

Lastly, all those who have been trying so hard to end up in heaven should hurry back to Malaysia or apply for Malaysian citizenship (you can buy one, you know), and vote for PAS – but, remember to do us all a favour, only state seats hor?

Legend:
PAS stands for PArti Se-Islam Malaysia a.k.a. PArty of Supreme Idiots of Malaysia
MCA stands for Malaysian Chinese Association a.k.a. Malaysian Clowns Association

The Idiot that tried to Change the Hour

This is a real life story I hear from my father. In the workshop where he worked decades ago there was a young apprentice that everyone called ‘Idiot Fu’. This Fu fella earned that nick-name because of the many foolish things he did. Once he tried changing the amount on his pay check but was ‘caught’ by a bank officer when he tried to cash it. The bank reported the attempt back to his company bosses but they ‘forgave’ him because they figured it was really not his fault. He was just plain stupid.

And on another occasion, he wanted to leave early from work. So during lunch break when no one was around, he turned the hands of the workshop clock ahead and thought everyone would not notice and leave early with him! Of course, his bosses and supervisors had wrist watches. As usual, he got his usual ‘scolding’ and things just went back to normal – to wait for our Idiot Fu to do his next ‘act’.

If you are idiotic enough, you really do get away with many things. Many people will just laugh it off and move on. In fact, I can remember Idiot Fu so well precisely because he was so idiotic. So if you are an idiot, you should aim to be Idiot Fu like. George Bush and his goons really remind me of that. And boy, they will be well remembered for sure…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3443627.stm

Who to Blame for Bird Flu?

According to the New Scientist, they suspect this year’s bird flu started in China as a result of a mass vaccination exercise gone sour when chickens in China were vaccinated following a bird flu epidemic in Hong Kong a few years ago. The Chinese government denied the allegation and strongly protested the irresponsible reporting of the weekly.

Those of us aware of the Story of Nolah would understand why the Chinese government may have a case. You see, according to the Nolah-likes, there is no such thing as evolution. Every thing that exists around us had been there since the beginning when God created everything and Nolah’s family were the only humans saved from a later ‘big flood’ by our fella Nolah himself.

So, Chinamen must be descendants of Nolah’s incestuous family and should therefore be preceded by the bird flu virus which existed from the very beginning. Of course, this assumes the following:

1. that Chinamen are humans.
Since we know many Chinamen claim they are Nolah-likes, Chinamen must be humans (anyone want to ‘arg’ with that? How about you Dolahs out there?)

2. the concepts of time and precedence holds true in Nature all the time.
Since the Nolah storybook did not say that these concepts are false, we have no basis to think so (this is the logic of IBBDNSSCSSL or ‘if Boss’ Book did not say so, cannot say so lah’). In addition, if time and precedence do not ‘pakai’, the New Scientist has no basis to be sure China’s vaccinations a few years ago caused the bird flu now.

There you have it, the New Scientist is wrong to blame the flu on the Chinese. Someone else is responsible but we can be sure it is not the Chinamen. I really give up on those ‘scientist’ fellas. They never accept such simple and neat explanations to things. And those silly fools are still mucking around everyday trying to find so-called ‘vaccines’ which they claim are slightly mutated and less fatal/virulent versions of the actual virus that they think when injected into humans will cause their bodies to produce anti-bodies against the actual culprit. (If you wonder why those stupid scientists should not waste time on that, it’s because mutation is the cornerstone of evolution and that’s not possible according to our Nolah-likes. Which is why when those Nolah-likes have a flu they don’t go to the scientists but go to the doctor! Hey, there’s a lot of difference, OK.)

By the way, how come Chinamen look different from other in-bred descendents of Nolah if there is no such thing as evolution? Aw, silly question, only fools say they are different. The only thing different is their names but even then it is just the ‘unimportant hind part’ where you find irrelevant terms like ‘Tan Ah Kow’ and ‘Chin Ah Beng’. And if you focus on the ‘most important’ front part of their names (you know, front means most important according to the precedence theory), they are all the same.

No? Let’s not quibble over that.

Actually, I left this out from our Nolah story. Once when an off-spring pair of Nolah was practicing their incestual kung fu, the father over-did the hops and chases. Which was why the mother over-heated. Which was why the Negroes were overcooked black and their hair permed. That also explains why Negros run and jump better than other humans (you better be able to run fast for the air cooling to work).

The Indians were luckier, their parents were either less enthusiastic or discovered Yoga to cool themselves down. So their mother’s temperature was lower and Indians only black but hair no perm.

The Caucasians were conceived while their parents were holidaying in the North Pole where the colder weather compensated for the mother's over-heating, and they liked the color of the polar bear.

And the Chinamen? Hah, this one more high tech! Their parents were holidaying in a region known as the Yellow Sea which is in between North Pole and India, so color also in between. They also discovered plastic surgery that they employed to pull back the skin just behind the eyes of their kids to produce the slit eyes! And since they liked the Indian’s straight black hair they transplanted some of those to their children.

What a Great Feat!

(attached link to BBC new report on landing of 2nd Nasa probe on Mars)

Reading this news item is really enlightening. And it reminds me of what Issac Assimov once said. It was something along this line.

In thousands of years of human history, religions had only words to offer the world - telling us how great each religion is, the feats/miracles their idols had done, and what great future mankind will have if we follow their words. But what history had proved is that the world had progressed little when those religious fellas were in charge, and all the progress
mankind made only came about in the last couple of hundred years of modern science and medicine, and rational thoughts (by the way, one faithful once told me he is not sure if rational thought is the way to look at the world. Then I say why do we think God gave our brains to us? All that just to be able read one book and say faith is all you need?)

I also remember a few favourite claims of a certain religion:
- that this entire existence is created for humans
- some of their idols can do miracles like parting the sea.

Of course, they have a hard time convincing people like me. For one, if this existence is for man's pleasure, then what the heck had those religious faithfuls been doing all this while? Of all such people I have the opportunity to know, it was nothing. Ziltch. They know nuts of even the simplest of astronomy! They send around chain mails with quotes from their one book (the only one they really read, I suspect) but I had never seen anything from them admiring real life accomplishments like that in the news article above (perhaps they think those were all cheap thrills or conspiracies to bluff fools like me!)

Secondly, if those idols of theirs were so great why didn't they pass on their skills to their millions of current day faithfuls? (I know some of these fellas are damn sure they are faithfuls!). Then, they won't have to do much convincing. No, they didn't. Perhaps the truth is more like those Chinese swordfighting novels where the masters fight and die trying to keep their 'kung fu skills' from all and since then foolish chinamen had been fantasising about flying through air and blowing up things with a wave of their hands? I mean, can you imagine how 'green' this world would have been if those chinese kung fu masters had passed their skills to us? We would not need cars, ships and planes. Heck, we don't even need WMDs! (I can never stop laughing when I think about these kung fu movies!)

That notwithstanding, given the scale of the world around us, parting sea is small trick for supposedly godlike super humans. I mean if these fellas' book tell me that one of their idols went universe hopping with his bunch of followers and he parted a few galaxies along the way, then I say, hey may be that was something. But no, these fellas didn't even know how to make a telescope to look at the moon & sun until our friend Galileo came along. And they even had the gall to call Galileo a liar!

So now, which do you think is a greater feat? Writing stories about parting seas (or kung fu masters, depending on which is your fancy) or sending probes to Mars?

Pantun Sili

SMS from Tan Chee Peng dd 26 Jan 2004 (5th day of CNY)

(Pantun Cina)
Hali busak sula mali
Beli nimau satu loli
Satu tawun satu kali
Wa mikin silap wa vely soli
GONG XI FA CAI
Itu ampau sini mali

The above 'pantun' was received sometime after I heard that Chee Peng had left Stratech (where I worked from Mar 2002 to May 2003) after a short stint as CEO. By then I also heard that Stratech had cut the pay of all management staff except the HR manager because of the weak state of its business. My 'pantun' response below had that back drop in mind:

Slamat pagi, Mari mari
Kami copi, Main sini
Pantun ini, Mana cali
Hebot skali. Akan tapi Sikit sili

Dengar stori, habis moni
potong gaji, semua ofis kurang happi
U pegi dari strategi
Ngapa lari, Mana pegi?
Lain kali, Kalau free
Boleh mari, beli kopi. Cakap stori
Harus pegi, ada busi. Veli sori

The Story of Nolah

As the English saying goes, new brooms sweep clean. And so it is that people like me often come across overly enthusiastic friends who were new converts to certain ideas and more than eager to share. According to some, they want to ‘share their message’ with me because as a friend they care about my future and where I will end up – you know, the one H or the other H. One of the most incredible topics that I had the chance of discussing with some of these seemingly intelligent and well informed people is the story of the Big Flood. Never can I find a nice way to communicate to them how simplistic if not silly I find that story to be. For one, when one compares the story to what is generally accepted general knowledge, the problems that one finds with the story is just too plenty that one do not know where or how to start. Then I was always told that I have to try and see it from their point of view. So I tried to do that but found that I had to fill in the gaps that I find. So I took the liberty to exercise some imagination to try bridge those gaps and here is the result:

Once upon a time about 5,000 years ago there lived a very, very, very old fella who lived in a place called the Blomiss Land. Apparently he was 500 years old then (clearly genetic inheritance did not work for this fella as all his descendants never lived more than 30 years until modern science & medicine came along 100 years ago). One day, while mucking around, our fella heard a voice tell him: “Humans had disobeyed me. I made them to be nice people but they kill and do all sorts of terrible things against my wish. I shall wipe them and everything else from the face of earth by way of a great flood. But you, my old fella, is different. You are my shining star. So go build yourself a boat and save all the animals of the world from this great flood by loading your boat with one pair of each animal.” (by the way, this Boss is a sledgehammer kind of guy. Humans disobeyed him but he decided to kill other animals, insects and plants too. And for all his supposed powers, flooding is a rather crude method of mass extermination. Perhaps it was not the right time for nuclear power, WMDs or laser guns for example. But who can tell what the Boss should do, hor?)

Our old fella thought to himself: “Waoh, incredible opportunity to be a hero not to be missed!” and he proudly answered: “OK, no problem Boss. Consider it done!”

And so this fella built himself a wooden boat the size of a house with his bare hands. Apparently he took 100 years to do that (clearly his wood cutting and boat making skills were limited and the Boss left the task very much to our fella). After he was done, the Boss told him that the flood would begin in 7 days and last for 7 days (7 days was also how long the Boss took to create the world but that is because 7 days is the usual quantum used by the Boss for all his undertakings. Hah, origins of quantum theory?)

The next day, our then 600 year old fella saw before him all the animals that the Boss had instructed to queue in front of his house. But you should have seen what happened before that. It was such an incredible sight of discipline, control and sheer super feats all round but the Boss left everything out of his book (perhaps he was napping). The kangaroos and koalas were swimming across the Indian Ocean with the penguins! The jelly fish were parachuting in air across land! The orang utans were swinging from tree to tree from Borneo and across the South China Sea! The salmons were mud walking with the tunas across the Palestinian desert, and the arowanas across the Himalayas! The rattle snakes, bisons and cougars among others swam across the Atlantic, round the Cape of Good Hope, up the Arabian Sea, and walked across Sinai to get to our fella’s boat! The eagles were ushering the robins, the robins the worms, the owls the rats, the lions the impalas, and the hyenas the deers all the way from Africa to the pick up point. And all that with their predatory instincts perfectly suppressed! Oh boy, the Boss would have been impressed if he saw that. May be he was still napping or perhaps he thought only a pair of those animals were involved - too few to be statistically important (see, statistics is a natural law). Whatever the case, the remainder of the animal kingdom had to meet their destiny of accompanying those bad humans.

Anyway, our fella was quite a sharp old man. He noticed that missing from the queue was a very important category of life form: the insects. He decided that he should do them a favour and include them in his boat. But “how many different types of insects are there?” he asked. He was smart enough to decide against undertaking a global insect inventory exercise. That would have meant engaging the services of a few hundred thousand people from a race known as the By-O-Logis (not to mention having to wait a few thousand years for them to appear on the face of the earth), and have them share in the glory. So, this smart fella thought “Aha, may be I go surf the Net. That thing should be able to give me what I want!”

And so on the second day, he proceeded to build this great thing called the Net that on the press of a button flashed for him the number of types of insects and a DIY guide on where they can be found. But he needed some papers to print out the DIY list for reference.

So on the third day he made some quality paper and a printer for himself (he was the inventor of paper and printer). In the list was stated that there was about 4 to 6 million species of insects. And, oh boy, how that frustrated our fella and he exclaimed “you mean after all my great feat you do not even bother to tell me exactly how many types of insects there is?” But adaptive as ever, our fella decided to cut a bit of a corner and decided there must be no more than 4 million “Heck, who is to be bothered if there’s 30% less of these insects!” (Oh, this fella is a big picture guy that doesn’t get caught up with details).

So on the fourth day, he proceeded to make 4 million plastic containers (one for each type of insect) all in a day flat (oh, he was a great oilman and plastic manufacturing industrialist. In fact, he invented drilling and plastic moulding. And he also invented the pump, pipe, nuts, bolts and many other parts needed to make that oil drilling and plastic factory. Trust me, he did! And the list is much longer than that. You guys just won’t be able to appreciate it – so I left them all out).

On the fifth day, our fella proceeded to load the ship up with the 4 million plastic containers. But after about 10,000 he found that there was no more space left on his wooden boat! So he decided to build a bigger one. But how big? He got hold of an abacus (he invented the first calculator) and calculated that assuming each container is 1 litre in size he would need a ship that has a holding capacity of at least 4 million litres just for insects (our fella invented the maths concept of multiplication, and the metric system). With that he surfed his Net again and found out that it is impossible to build a wooden boat of that size. But he found pictures of an aircraft carrier, and thought to himself: “Aha, that looks like a good idea. I shall build one of these ‘island of steel’ where all the birds of the world can take off and land safely. “

So, on the sixth day our fella built a steel ship the size of a small aircraft carrier. He was a master metallurgist and invented steel too. And he invented the steam engine and propeller on that same day to power his carrier but found that it was not powerful enough. So he invented the petrol engine and oil refinery but found that to get enough oil to power his carrier he would have to work with a neighboring people called the Allabs. But it would be below this fella who thought himself as the special agent of the Boss to have anything to do with the Allabs. So, he decided to can the idea of a steel carrier and stayed with his wooden boat (Einstein was also not there to tell our fella that nuclear power was feasible).

On the seventh day, our fella wanted to determine how long it would take him to get hold of the 4 million insects. But when he gave the abacus his little challenge, it told him that to calculate the time needed it would have to make some assumptions first. Like assuming it takes 30 minutes to find & catch one type, and our fella worked 24 hours everyday, that will take 228 years (this fella invented Algebra too). To which our fella replied “you nuts or something? Don’t you know I have to sleep and I don’t have an eternity to catch those insects? Tell me what it takes to get this done in one day and I need 8 hours of sleep!” “OK, that will be no more than 0.02 seconds per specie” replied the abacus. “You must be kidding me!” said our fella “can’t you figure out a better way?” “Yes, but you will have to reduce the number of insects you catch” (our fella invented articifical intelligence too). In frustration, our fella decided that he might as well start loading his ship with his family and the animals in his farm before the other wild animals in the queue, and in the meantime figure out a more efficient way to catch those insects. So he loaded his ship with his family, a pair of sheep, a pair of chicken, a pair of ducks, a pair of cow/bull, a pair of pythons, a pair of lizards, a pair of horses, a pair of pigs, a pair of goldfishes, and a pair of houseflies. By then it was dark and he needed his rest, so he said to himself “Done…”

But before he could finish his sentence (he really meant to say ‘done for time being’), the sky suddenly turned dark and water started filling up the land and soon the whole world was flooded and all life forms died except for our fella and his stock of farm animals on his boat.

Then the Boss appeared out of nowhere and asked our fella “So, I heard you are done with your great endeavor. Congratulations. By the way, what is your name and did you do as I said?” Too embarrassed to lie (this fella was quite an honest guy) the fella meekly said “No lah” (there, that’s proof that our fella was a Singaporean Jew). And the Boss said “Very well Nolah. Henceforth, you shall be one of the stars in my forthcoming book. And the name Nolah shall be known to the whole world as the one-man hero who saved all the animals from the great flood! I shall leave everything in your capable hands.” And the water around him disappeared as suddenly as it came (presumably they went to the poles as reserves, see below).

And so from that day, everything was in our fella’s hands. And, boy, what a great responsibility he had. There were no more wild animals left (remember, they all died in the flood?), and all the other insects, reptiles, fishes, and animals that Nolah left out were gone. How was he going to replace all of them? But the good news was that our fella was a master breeder and genetics engineer! As he does not believe in evolution, all life forms we have today has to owe it to our fella. So our fella bred a new stock of man from his family (this was the first recorded case of in-breeding which explains why we have so many idiots around), and he bred, cross-bred and tinkered with the genetic make up of his stock of farm animals and produced the following:

- from his sheeps, cow/bull, horses and pigs he produced lions, cats, goats, elephants, kangaroos, pandas, tigers, deers, and thousands of other species we now call mammals;

- from his pair of chicken and ducks he produced the swans, gooses, parrots, swallow, eagles, cockatoos, vultures, and thousands of other species we now call birds;

- from his lizards and pythons he created the iguana, komodo dragon, crocodile, cobras, vipers and all the other species we now call reptiles;

- from his houseflies he produced the 15 to 30 million types of insects we possibly had but he found them too pesky and so he invented Shelltox and Mopiko, and got rid of all but 4 to 6 million of them.

While performing those feats which were chicken feet for this fella, he also had some fun:

- he affixed a cat’s head onto an eagle and produced the owl;

- he painted a few white horses with black paints and created zebras;

- he found some of his horses smaller and more dumb than others so he called them donkeys. The yet smaller ones were called mules;

- he crossed a man with a goat to produce the apes, chimps and monkeys (that’s why these animals have nothing to do with man, only our fella);

- he taught a small bear to climb trees in Australia and called it a koala;

- he poked sewing pins through the ends of some houseflies to produce bees and wasps;

- he clipped the wings of chicken and ostriches and get the latter to hide their heads in sand instead of running away so that man can catch them (that’s in line with the special status of man);

- he stretched a yellow cat and painted it with black dots to come up with the cheetah, and he stretched a black one to make a panther;

- he shrunk his pythons to make earthworms and flattened them to make tapeworms, and he put some of them in some men’s stomachs if they were naughty;

- he pitied the kangaroos having to hop around holding their youngs in their arms so he gave them pouches (he invented the haver-sack);

- he painted the ears, arms, legs and eyes of stunted polar bears black, and forced them to eat only bamboo shoots in remote mountains in China to stop them from challenging the polar bear in his annual body building contests (hey, he is not the first or the last to believe in the concept of special status. Nepotism? You must be anti-semi-something). Later day By-O-Logis in their ignorance called them pandas;

- he crossed a young butterfly with a worm and produced the caterpillar but, incredibly to this day, the young caterpillars keep refusing to follow the script when they reach maturity (that was after our fella had already drafted the first statute on the right of all to self-determination when they reach adulthood. This was the precursor to modern international legal system and the UN Charter).

But of all, he had the most fun with water. You see, all water on Earth was fresh water. You know how we know there was only fresh water? That was because the Boss’ book never mentioned about our fella building huge reservoirs, swimming pools, or tanks to hold fresh water, and our fella’s family and his animals need freshwater to stay alive during the big flood.

But later, things changed.

- Our fella poured trillions of tonnes of salt into the oceans to make 98% of water on Earth saline and found that many of his fishy freshwater creations died. But luckily God knew ahead what our fella was about to do and kept 98% of the remaining 2% as spares at the poles (wait a minute, you mean this less than 2% of 2% of water at the poles was all it took to flood the whole world?), and freed up the other 2% so that our fella’s descendant and creations can survive. If u wonder why man has to share with so many other life forms 2% of 2% water, that’s because they are all special in God’s eyes, dumbo! And don’t ask how our fella got the salt (you won’t believe it) but that was where Gandhi got the idea of a mass non-cooperation exercise to produce salt a few thousand years later and how the kiam-her, Chinese salted fish, was created;

- and since our fella and his descendants don’t believe in evolution, our fella had to create sea water life forms from his kampong collection all from scratch;

- he whipped his goldfish in salty jello to re-produce jelly-fish;

- he crossed a goldfish and a sheep to produce the whales, manatees, dolphins and seals. He filed the teeth of a whale sharp and created sharks. In fact, all ocean living life forms was bred from his pair of gold fish;

- to give his salt water fishes company, our fella crossed his white chicken with his black duck and pumped it up with growth hormones to create penguins and forced them to live off the oceans but only south of the equator to also give company to his descendants in Australia;

- to encourage friendship across water boundaries, our fella commanded eels to live mostly in freshwater but breed only in saltwater, and the sturgeons and salmons to live in saltwater but only get fresh in freshwater. So these poor animals have to make pilgrimage of thousands of miles just to have one go at it in their entire life (that was the origin of the Haj). He commanded the American and European eels to put their entire stake in America and therefore can only do their thing there (see, he created NATO long before clowns like Churchill et al) and from there they invaded every freshwater hole in the American east cost, Europe and Western Asia (so, you think Columbus and Bush were the first that had those ideas?);

- because his Boss’ book said that everything on Earth is created for man, our fella created tubeworms, bacteria, shrimps and squids that live miles under the ocean so that 2nd generation By-O-Logis has something to do while his other descendants spend their lives reading his Boss’ book which, by the way, did not mention those animals because the Boss did not want to make the latter’s lives complicated.

Our fella liked to watch the private parts of male mammals so he had them hanging out in the open (but silly men after him who did not have the same taste covered them up!) but thought that since he had no scuba gears the dolphins and whales can have theirs concealed (hah, at least we know Jacques Cousteau’s idea was original).

His Boss did not believe in killing but our fella forgot his commandments on stone tablets, and ended up equipping many animals with poisons and created viruses. For the same reason, his in-bred descendants included people with screwed up brains that kill each other and our fella’s other creations for all sorts of reasons but he was smart enough to blame it on his Boss’ nemesis Evel (in fact, he popularized the concepts ‘thinking on your feet’ or ‘my foot’ depending on how you see it).

Our fella purposely had many animals born sexless so that he can play deputy Boss and individually determine what sex each individual will have years later depending on what happens around them or what man does. For those which are naughty he just switched them in mid-track as punishment. Now that our fella is no more around, those animals left the decision to man supposedly because the Boss’ book said man is actually mini copies of the Boss or mini Bosses.

Thus, according to the Boss’ book, all the people and animals of the present world owe their lives to the incredible genius of this fella he called Nolah. And since then, every animal on Earth lived happily ever after. With man as the mini Bosses, of course.

p.s. In his original book, the Boss did not mention all the great deeds and accomplishments of Nolah above because according to his readers he thought lowly of Nolah’s descendants (likely also because of the in-breeding). So, the book simply said that ‘Nolah saved all the animals of the world’.

Also, the idea that man is a mini Boss was actually not the Boss’ but one of his wayward sub-editors. But then, since the Boss speaks and writes only through self-appointed reps, publishers, family or deputies, and many of these later day fellas have a history of ego and other disorders above the neck, it was hard to figure out what the Boss really thought. But we do know there are at least 3 broad groups of mini-Bosses which are totally disagreeable to each other and, in fact, had been at each other’s throats for centuries till today!

The book also did not mention about the different types of vegetations that died in the great flood (in fact, the book did not say our fella was asked to save them) which our fella re-created through his great bio-agro-genetic skills. Our fella created all forms of present day vegetation single handedly using only wood chips taken off his wooden boat through the technique known as retro-genesis which was actually based on the retrogressive creation concepts developed by the Babylonians before him. And our fella even dived hundreds of feet under sea water without any aid to plant some of his new salt water veggies!

Our fella allegedly made over-sized versions of lizards and crocodiles but found that he could not control them. So he simply wiped them from the face of Earth and his Boss’ book through the use of WMDs (which stands for ‘What’s Missing from the book Doesn’t exist’). Luckily, Evel managed to hide some of the bones of these animals underground before the WMDs could take full effect. But according to followers of the Boss’ book, all that was bull since nothing was mentioned in the book. It was Evel who led a group of nutty scientists to his collection of toothpicks millions of years later and taught them how to put those pieces of longish crooked calcium strips together and come up with the idea of dinosaurs!

And some present day followers of this story are quite convinced that a small wooden boat found in some desert is the boat built by this great fella Nolah. They claim that, if true, that will prove the greatness of our fella. That’s despite many attempts by others to show that our fella’s greatness is not really in that wooden boat but in all the great feats implied and mentioned in accounts like the above. But, I guess, the Boss was right after all. Man will never be able to figure it out.

Something to Think About

(My response to article at the bottom)

Hi,

Lest we all become parrots that follow after such 'they are less virtuous than me' crap from the white man, the other MAJOR reasons why the 'rich' countries are rich are the following:

1. the wealth accrued from centuries of plundering other people's wealth and natural resources (up till the present day) through the use of force

- Canada, NZ & Australia ARE rich in natural resources and the white men there ARE enjoying them now after killing off almost all the locals.

- their population were decendents of plunderers from all the ex-colonies(if only u know how many Australians were from old South Africa, Rhodesia etc.). Their relatives there still control much of the businesses and natural resources there e.g. whites (<>Contents of message forwarded to me titled 'Something to Think About'
(supposedly ‘copyrighted 1997 Michael J. Bonnel http://www.mikebonnell.com/’ in small prints)

To reflect and act…

The difference between the rich and poor countries is not the age of the country. This can be shown by countries like Egypt and India which are more than 2,000 years old but poor. On the other hand, look at Canada, NZ and Australia which 150 years ago were inexpressive but are now developed and rich.

The difference between the rich and poor countries does not reside in their natural resources. Japan has limited territory, 80% mountainous, and unsuitable for agriculture and cattle raising but is the second largest economy in the world. The country is like an immense floating factory, importing raw materials from the whole world and exporting manufactured products. Another example is Switzerland which does not grow cocoa but has the best chocolates in the world. In its small territory they raise animals and plant the soil 4 months in a year. Not enough they produce the best dairy products in the world. It is a small country that transmit an image of security, order & labour, that makes it a strong safe.

Executives from rich countries that communicate with counterparts in poor countries show that there is no significant intellectual difference.

Race or skin colour also is not important: immigrants from poor countries labeled as lazy in their countries of origin are the productive power behind rich European countries.

What is the difference then? The difference is their attitude framed along the years of education and culture.

On analyzing people in rich and developed countries we find that the great majority follow the following principles in life:
- Ethics, as basic principle
- Integrity
- Responsibility
- Respect to laws and rules
- Respect to rights of other citizens
- Work loving
- Strive for savings and investment
- Will of super action
- Punctuality

In poor countries, only a minority follow such principles in their daily life. We are not poor because we lack natural resources or nature is cruel to us. We are poor because we lack the attitude. We lack the will to comply with and to teach these functional principles of rich and developed societies.

A New Year Greeting

Hi all,

A happy new year to you.

For those of us who believe that a better world can only come about through more than just prayers, hopes, well wishes and a 'there's nothing much we can do' detachment, here is one site you may want to take a look at.

It may also help the less informed understand why some people are willing to blow themselves up again and again. The Chinese has an old saying "to force a tiger to jump over a wall" to describe a situation when one forces another to react in the most extreme of ways.

The Palestinian version of this is like "to try build a wall in a tiger's lair and force it dance to an Israeli tune". The Israeli version is "I am special in god's eye and a tiger is a beast, so I am good and the tiger is bad. Whatever wall I build or do with the tiger is my god given right". Amazing super arrogance. No wonder they get bitten by tigers wherever they go....

http://www.couragetorefuse.org/defaultEng.asp

Home page content:
We, reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who were raised upon the principles of Zionism, sacrifice and giving to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel, who have always served in the front lines, and who were the first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, in order to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
We, combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people.

We, whose eyes have seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.

We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories, destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this country.

We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of IDF’s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society.

We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.

We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.

We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.

We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.

The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them.

Another Hour of the Idiot

About a hundred years or so ago, when ostrich feathers were still prized (and worth more than gold) for their decorative powers, there existed a group of ostrich farmers in southern Africa who prided themselves with their ostrich farming skills. So, in order keep their 'special' knowledge within their small community (its a supply & demand thing), they married within the community.

Soon they found that their offsprings included many idiots that they were more than a bit embarassed to be seen in public. So, they built 'ostrich palaces' which had large basements where they kept their idiot children from the public eye. But they cannot keep the children there for too long without having to withstand their complaints & restlessness. So the
families let their idiots out of their ostrich palaces and take walks in the streets with their maids on Sunday afternoons just after the town folks had their afternoon prayers. The thinking is that at that hour most town folks will be resting at home, and less people will get to know of their idiot children.

But what they didn't know is that people do get to know and that hour was then known as the 'hour of the idiots'.

The moral of this real story is this: whatever they do or think, there is always a time when idiots will show their true selves. One just has to wait for 'their hour'.

The attached news article is one such example from my country:


Malaysia moots cross-cultural circumcision
By Jonathan Kent BBC, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia is to consider using mass circumcision ceremonies to promote racial harmony.

Circumcision is a rite of passage for young Muslim boys, and in Malaysia it is common for the ceremony to become an event with dozens, or even hundreds of boys being circumcised together.

Now the prime minister's religious affairs adviser has suggested that circumcision can bring Malaysians of all races and religions together.
Dr Abdul Hamid Othman said that with the growing popularity of circumcision among the country's non-Muslim minorities - who see it as good hygienic practice - they too could be invited to join in the celebrations with their Muslim friends.

He believes the idea could promote better race relations and he wants to see a nationwide circumcision ceremony organised.

Just over half of Malaysia's population is Muslim, mainly members of the ethnic Malay community, while the country's Chinese, Tamil and tribal peoples follow a variety of other faiths.

The government has been exploring ways of stopping the different groups from drifting apart, including the introduction of a national service scheme which begins in February.

Let's Toll the Bell

It is always an honour to Toll the Bell for the Hour of the Finest, for the ones in flesh that deliver what many of us can only hope.

US court rules Guantanamo detainees should be allowed lawyers (19/12/2003)

WASHINGTON (AFP) A US federal appeals court, in a setback for the Bush administration, ruled that detainees at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be allowed access to lawyers and US courts.

The 2-1 ruling delivered by the San Francisco-based US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was the second blow delivered Thursday to legal maneuvers by the administration of President George W. Bush in its "war on terror."

Earlier in the day, a federal appeals court in New York ruled that Bush did not have the right to detain Jose Padilla, an American citizen seized on US soil, as an "enemy combatant" and ordered his release within 30 days.

The San Francisco-based appeals court issued its ruling in a case filed by Belaid Gherebi on behalf of his brother, Faren, a Libyan who is being held without charge at Guantanamo along with hundreds of other men captured in the US "war on terror."

The court was harshly critical of the detention of the prisoners at Guantanamo without charge or the protections of the Geneva Convention.

"Even in times of national emergency -- indeed, particularly in such times -- it is the obligation of the Judicial Branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the Executive Branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike," said Justice Steven Reinhardt, writing for the majority.

"We simply cannot accept the government's position that the Executive Branch possesses the unchecked authority to imprison indefinitely any persons, foreign citizens included, on territory under the sole jurisdiction and control of the United States, without permitting such prisoners recourse of any kind to any judicial forum, or even access to counsel," Reinhardt said.

"In our view, the government's position is inconsistent with fundamental tenets of American jurisprudence and raises most serious concerns under international law," the justice said.

"Under the government's theory, it is free to imprison Gherebi indefinitely along with hundreds of other citizens of foreign countries, friendly nations among them, and to do with Gherebi and these detainees as it will, when it pleases, without any compliance with any rule of law of any kind, without permitting him to consult counsel and without acknowledging any judicial forum in which its actions may be challenged," he added.

"To our knowledge, prior to the current detention of prisoners at Guantanamo, the US government has never before asserted such a grave and startling proposition," he said. "It is the first time that the government has announced such an extraordinary set of principles -- a position so extreme that it raises the gravest concerns under both American and international law."

Some 660 prisoners are being held at Guantanamo Bay. Most of them were captured in Afghanistan when the
United States toppled the Taliban regime and routed al-Qaeda's network, responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The ruling by the 9th Circuit Court was the first by any court affirming that Guantanamo detainees should be allowed access to lawyers and to the US judicial system, but is likely to be supplanted by a US Supreme Court ruling expected soon.

The Supreme Court agreed last month to hear a similar case.

Reed Brody, legal counsel for Human Rights Watch, welcomed the ruling by the 9th Circuit.

"The Bush Administration thought that by holding the detainees on Guantanamo, it could keep them out of the reach of the Constitution and the courts," he said. "Guantanamo has become America's shame.

"Today's decision is a great victory for the rule of law because it says that even these prisoners must have access to the courts," Brody said.

The Day the World Calls the Biggest Bluff in History

As many pseudo-economists among us know, money is just a piece of paper we hold in our wallet or more likely a number in a computer hard disk. They are worth what we think they are worth because there are enough people around who believe the same. Of course, paper money has its advantages. The most obvious is efficiency in trade exchange. Which explains why it is 'so popular' and every government wants to issue its own currency. But it takes no brain for one to also appreciate that it takes little to issue a piece of paper or to buy a hard disk. In fact, it costs the US government a few cents to issue a Dollar. Of course, it would be lesser for all those who counterfeit it.

And so, for centuries men in high places of power had been building up and taking advantage of this phenomenon known as Seignorage. The logic is that as long as there are enough fools out there that believe that my dollar is really worth a dollar, I can continue printing and exchanging one piece of my paper for a real tangible product. (For example, if the shoemaker from China is stupid enough to sell me his shoe for a piece of my paper so be it. Who do you think is the happier?) But the more credible ones learnt over time that you can bluff everyone some of the time but not forever (for money to work you cannot bluff only some people, hor, must be able to bluff most or all of them.). So, to ‘backup’ their credibility they used to commit themselves to delivering a specified amount of something of real tangible value like gold every time a holder of their paper wishes to ‘call on them’. But it is part of human greed that all of them will try to stretch their luck a bit (hey, that’s easy ‘money’ man, no need to really work) and issue more than they can really backup with real gold, and hope only a few really calls on them. Of course, if you have a big stick and is in desperation you can always whack any small guy that tries to do so and avoid delivering your gold (so Saddam, now do you really want your oil paid in Euro?).

And it is with this knowledge that there are some smart men that will think of ways to make money out of these greedy issuers. And so we hear of stories where certain people will induce and help governments to print more and more money for a fee or a share of the money issued. But these fellas are smarter that we folks. Very soon after that, they actually call on the issuers for the gold they are committed to deliver (while we all stupidly held on to the papers or our bank statements) and they tuck away those gold bars in a safe somewhere and wait for the day when that currency crashes due to ‘over expansion of money supply’ (economic jargon, but it essentially means ‘when the bluff gets too big’). These people are generally known as ‘financiers’ or ‘bankers’ (everything has to sound nice to customers, otherwise how to sell them crap?).

Quiz 1: where is 80% of the world’s known gold reserves held? Wonder why and how it got there?

Clue 1: No, not Fort Knox you old parrot. Fort Knox is for issuer type people. If you haven’t figured out by now, issuer types tend to lose gold not gather them!

Clue 2: In WWII the Japanese Army has special units specially assigned to seek out the richest families in occupied territories to get at their gold, the colonialists demanded gold for the opium they sold to the Chinese and they give themselves long term mining contracts before they leave their colonies (Iraq, does this sound like Bush-it again?)

Quiz 2: who are the top issuers and financiers in history?

Quiz 3: when do you know people are beginning to call their bluffs?

Hey, I don’t have answers to these questions. I am just another conspiracy theorist selling another quack! Only fools will buy such stories....

p.s. but if you do think I may have a point and has an idea on what to do to protect my wealth, pls let me know. I am still scratching my head on this one. Thanks in advance.


Background to Seignorage

The economic phenomenon Seignorage is well known to many economists but not all. I first learnt about Seignorage from an economist friend only a few years ago during the Asian Financial Crisis (which started in 1997 just after HK’s return to China) when the US seems to be booming along happily. Those were the times when I saw on TV the supreme arrogance of the IMF chief standing hands folded and over the shoulders of Suharto as the latter signed away whatever he had to in a desperate attempt to stay in power, of a certain cowboy US vice president Al Gore insulting his Malaysian hosts in front of their international guests, and of the international media (international only because enough fools around the globe parrot after them) gleefully writing about the end of the Asian miracle and their widespread KKN (Korrupsi, Kolusi, Nepostisme in Indon) as the cause of the crisis.

At that time, the Dow Jones was trading at an average P/E ratio of 40 while the Asian markets were trading below 10! My simpleton logic told me that people should be buying into Asia instead of running away. Dumbfounded, I decided to ask an economist friend of mine (Liew holds a master degree on Economics from the US, was my classmate from primary one and worked for a stock broking house at that time but later joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore).

His reply was that the Americans were different and their management are disciplined enough to cut losses when an investment gets bad. That’s why people are willing to pay a ‘premium’ for their stocks.

I disagreed with him and said that I do not believe the Americans are any different from anyone else in the world (I had the advantage of having worked in JP Morgan and saw how they operated). I suspect it has something to do with the US Dollar which gave them an advantage but could not explain it.

Later when I read that the Arabs and other countries contributed US$90 billion to the US for the Iraq war of 1990 for weapons that the US had already paid for, and realized that the Asian Crisis happened a few months after HK’s return to China (property prices in HK dropped 60% then thanks to the British policies before that), I also wondered if they also figured in the picture.

At that point in time I sensed that Liew saw that I might have a point but he also could not explain it. But a few months later he sent me an e-mail on the topic of ‘seignorage’ and said that that may be what I was looking for. Obviously he was bothered enough by my views to do some research.

However, that incident bothered me. It seemed that even supposedly ‘experts’ on economics may not really understand how the world really works. The reasons that Liew gave me initially were based on the concept of ‘some people are better than others, that’s why their stock markets commands better value’. Although it was clearly a subjective and somewhat ‘racist’ view, even professional economists like Liew seem happy enough to use it to explain something they clearly do not understand. To be fair, they were just following after the international media which were then saying that the Asian Crisis was caused by KKN.

That to me was a real life example of the power of the media and the folly of the human race. Thinking outside the box and independent thoughts are indeed rare.

Why It's Time for Me to Go Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho

A long time ago, some ancestors of man discovered that it is more efficient to stay put at one place and grow their own food rather than to live a life of nomadic hunters/pickers/scavengers. They also realised that a few natural elements are important to the success of this change in life style and strategy - fertile soil, water and sunlight. (Hey, you may think that this is basic stuffs but there are kids and probably their parents who think their veggies come from the local supermarket).

One of the best places to find fertile soil and lots of water is obviously the banks of a river or lake (but no river no lake hor). The only ones that cannot see that were the blind ones or their mental equivalents. That explains why all great civilisations blossomed along the banks of great rivers. But great rivers overflow almost every year and change course from time to time, thus stories of great floods. And great floods destroy crops (those precious crops!) and people have to try save as much things as possible. So it is not difficult to understand why floods became such a great concern to our ancestors. However, different ancestors of man took different outlooks on this important issue:

1. Some decided to write stories about great floods and heroes to encourage selfless conduct in time of floods, and left everything else to fate/faith. As time goes by, the more 'creative' of this type made the themes grander. Like saying that such selfless conduct is in the service of god and will be rewarded with the promise of eternal life.

2. But there are more practical others who figured that this perennial problem can be managed through the building of canals, embankments, reservoirs etc. That way there is less need to ‘stretch’ things the way the previous approach did.

Now, it does not take much brain to see which approach took more brains but then you can take your time while we move on to where this part of this story is so relevant to this time of the year. And it has to do with the Sun.

As mentioned earlier, many of our ancestors realised that the Sun is a very important element to life. In fact, they realised very early in their agricultural life that without the Sun, nothing grows. Well, almost. Unless you are a bacteria but that's another story, or a Singaporean graduate I know who said that 'trees may then switch to eating meat'! (No prize for guessing which faith he belongs to.)

People in the northern hemisphere noticed that sometimes the sun 'goes away'. When that happens everything gets covered with snow, nothing grows and most animals went away with the Sun (in fact their forefathers used to do that too but they have forgotten about it since they chose to settle at a fixed location). So we can imagine ancestors of ours would be very interested in the movement of this great giver of life, the Sun. And it was probably an annual ritual for them to watch anxiously as the Sun moved south in case it would not return (probably because the they thought the earth was flat and the Sun might just fall off, like the popes did until the likes of Copernicus came up with a smarter alternative. But hey, we are talking about people before them. So, we can excuse the pope-like ones for the time being.)

But people also noticed that the sun always return after a while. And when that happens, everything seems to spring back to life - flowers bloom, crops grow, birds and animals return to feed on them. And food is plentiful. For those that have the concept of the calendar, it was noticed that the Sun always makes its ‘u-turn’ during a 2-3 days period of a particular time in the year. (For those of us that remember some science lessons from school, the u-turn period is known scientifically as the winter solstice.) So the ancients ‘tagged’ that few days as special days worthy of great joy (more like relief) and celebrations. Which explain why all great cultures in the northern hemisphere (no matter what their colour and belief are) celebrate the day when the sun makes its u-turn. The Chinese have their own name for this celebration and so do the Indians, Romans and so on. And so this appreciation for the value and importance of the Sun went on for many thousands of years until the present day. Which also explain why the Sun god is such an important entity in many cultures.

But as in all great stories there are always interesting twists and one happened to this story about 2,000 years ago. I shall relate this one with some ambiguity just for the heck of it, and to avoid offending some sensitive souls (their supreme blessings not withstanding).

When the Romans first gained fancy on a certain new concept then, it was decided by someone that they should celebrate the birth of their ‘idol’ which they claimed as the ‘son of god’ as a sign of regard. At first, it was decided that that day should take place sometime in the early months of each year. But the powers that be found that no matter what they did, they could not make that day beat the celebrations conducted for the day when the Sun makes its u-turn! (not surprising if all around you were mostly practical farmers but don’t give those powers that be too much credit, hor) So, in a classic example of the saying that if you cannot beat ‘em join them, those powers decided that they might as well move the day of celebrating the birth of their idol to the same time as the celebrations of the Sun. That way, they figured, they can ensure maximum revelry for the new event they wanted to celebrate. And so history records that they literally commandeered the 'day of the Sun' as the 'day of the Son' (cute pun, hor?).

Not interesting enough? Then did you hear the story of how a certain small place where I live ‘commandeered’ the same celebration for other reasons. They now celebrate this event for a full 2 months! And as opposed to remembering the importance of the Sun, they are only interested in shopping, presents, and the money it makes for them.

So, now you see why I always go ho, ho, ho, ho with amusement around this time of the year?