New Rule #3: If you're a CEO who's screwed up your bank, you don't get to walk away with millions of dollars

I can't believe that they even have to debate about a cap on severance packages for CEOs of the banks and financial institutions that have gone bust. Because of their greed, the average man in the street has lost their retirement savings, life savings, houses, livelihood and they get to walk away with up to 20 million dollars as a golden parachute? Why should there even be a debate on it??
These crooks should be booted out on to the street with nothing in their wallets! Their homes should be foreclosed, their severance packages should be divided up among the people who trusted them to look after their money! Enough is enough!

F1 values vs Climate Change

I'm sure this is not the mainstream opinion...and unfortunately so because its a reflection of where our values lie. I think the F1 is completely contrary to any attempt to fight climate change. Here we are spending 90 million dollars on building a track, gantries, barriers, extensive lighting to the point that you'd actually forget it was a 'night race' because its as bright as day, and pumping yet more carbon into the atmosphere, wasting petroleum as it is pumped into high velocity race cars which are basically going round and round on a track for the sole purpose of entertainment for what is mainly the rich and middle class. When the world financial system is poised on the edge of a meltdown, fat cat CEOs are getting away will millions of dollars in compensation for FAILED policies and we now have runaway climate change, this is akin to fiddling while Rome burns. How will history remember us? Massive expenditure on parties, catering mainly to rich celebrities who have flown in, expending more carbon. So whats the REAL cost of hosting this race here? not in mere dollars, but in carbon, in wasted electricity, petrodollars, lost business because of road closures....lets have a figure for that!

New Rule #2: If you can't treat your maid like a human being, then you don't deserve one

I thought last week's report on maid abuse took the cake but it appears that it is an ongoing saga!! Yet another 'employer'...I'd characterise them as slave-owners...has been charged with maid abuse. Well, I say if you can't treat your employees like human beings then you don't deserve the services of other human beings. You should be booted out of human society. An alternative punishment for domestic worker abusers is to serve out an appropriate length of time as a domestic worker. Then maybe you'll understand and emphathise with other human beings?

New Rules

Bill Maher does a segment at the end of his talk show entitled "New Rules". I'm starting my own segment on New Rules tonight........

New Rule #1:
Millionaires should start paying for their own tickets!

An article on page 1 of the Straits Times today mentions that millionaires will be getting free tickets to the F1 race next weekend. Banks in particular will be sponsoring their wealthiest clients with free luxury hotel stays and free grandstand tickets. It kind of stands to reason that if you're a millionaire, you can afford your own paid ticket to the event and your own paid hotel room. So what exactly are you using your millions for then? Well, the banks hope, by paying for your ticket, that you'll just channel it back into the bank!!! I guess wealth begets wealth and greed begets greed.

In the middle of a massive financial crisis where the little guy who invests his hard earned retirement savings in mammoth financial institutions, the little guy who is now very likely losing that investment, because of the greed of these institutions, it appears to be that the fat cats are the ones coming out smelling like roses.

Barbarity

Today's news about the abject cruelty and barbarity of the atrocity committed on yet another maid by a Singaporean family really takes the cake! The lengths that some Singaporeans will go to to inflict pain and suffering on others really makes me wonder if we have any sense of humanity at all in this country. Siblings who, with cruel deliberation wrenched the teeth out of their Indonesian maid's mouth with a pair of pliers. One wonders at the sociopathic tendencies of the General Public as more and more of the incidents are highlighted in the press.
The punishment for this completely callous act should fit the crime. Is 20 months in prison a sufficient deterrent? Will the offenders be caned? They certainly should be! If we can inflict caning on overstayers and vandals....surely barbarians such as these deserve far worse?

With the World at Stake.............

My focus has been on local social and political commentary but I thought I'd deviate and expand my blog to include events of global interest...namely the US Presidential election.
I am a fully fledged Barack Obama supporter. I think he is exactly what America needs...a change in attitude, a change in demeanour, a change in style, and a real change in Washington. I was completely blown away by his Acceptance speech a couple of weeks ago. It quite possibly might be one of the best speeches ever made...on the scale of MLK's I have a Dream, The Gettysburg Address, Winston Churchill's call to arms....it was that good...seriously! After having watched Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden build up to it...I thought...the democrats have it in the bag! Then along came the surprise announcement by John McCain on his selection of a running mate. Suddenly this unknown self-styled 'Hockey Mom' was cast into prominence and seemingly wooed over the Republicans. I watched her speech. I was not wooed. I saw it as nothing but an attack of rhetoric, with no substance whatsoever, not even 5% of it had anything you could hold on to. Nothing! Then we found out who she is....a creationist, gun-toting, oil-drilling, anti-abortionist, climate-crisis disbeliever. That's who could be a heartbeat away from the most important job in the world. Not only would we have George Bush once more...we'd have John Ashcroft, George Bush and Pat Buchanan rolled into one. It would be a disaster for the world. Truly a disaster. She's in her own words, "ready for the job". That's a combination of sheer arrogance and complete incompetence. Remember 8 years ago?
And that's even more reason why Barack Obama MUST be elected. Not just America but the WORLD cannot afford another idiot in the White House. Its really too bad that the rest of the planet doesnt get a vote...Obama would win by an avalanche!

Dissent Magazine

Dissent Magazine

Palin's Connection To 'Big Oil' | CommonDreams.org

Palin's Connection To 'Big Oil' | CommonDreams.org

Impeach President Bush Now, says Dennis Kucinich | CommonDreams.org

Impeach President Bush Now, says Dennis Kucinich | CommonDreams.org

Third World Attitudes

To say that Singaporeans have third world attitudes would be to insult the Third World. Travelling through South East Asia, a region still characterised as the Third World, I have seen truly elegant social graces, far more civilised than those that exist in this country! We are supposedly, if you listen to the authorities, the beacon of economic prosperity, in a region mired in political and social chaos. And to a large extent this is true. Why oh why then do we have such abysmal manners and social behaviours. We treat the people who do the jobs that no one else wants to do, the cleaners, the maids, the army of service personnel, the construction workers, as though they are the serf class in an increasingly 20th Century feudal society. We behave as though we are feudal Lords in Castles, employing people on disgraceful wages, forcing them to wake before dawn and to work tirelessly till way past dusk, berating them, abusing them in horrendous ways should they even make a single mistake. Is this what economic prosperity does to human beings? Do we truly believe that it elevates us above our fellow human beings?
This is how we appear to be raising our children...I witnessed a child, a student at a Primary school, barging his way to the front of a queue at the canteen. When chastised by the stall operator, he sneeringly said "My father told me that I don't have to queue because I am rich!"
This is the future of our nation? Then it is a future that I will gladly abandon for a less arrogant society....

Double Standards?

I am a big fan of the Olympics...even though I'm becoming less and less enamoured of them as the years go by and more athletes are turning professional. I particularly admire paralympians who, more so than regular super fit Olympian have to overcome Herculean odds to achieve sporting victory. So, then...why aren't we getting ANY coverage of the Paralympics on TV? There's nothing at all safe a 1-2 minute segment on the news. What's even worse, is that when Singaporean, native-born Paralympian Laurentia Tan won a bronze in an Equestrian event yesterday, it only warranted a tiny section in the front page and a full page in the sports section. When our foreign bought table tennis players won a silver, it made HEADLINES. So why the discrepancy? After all, isn't this what we were waiting for? A true blue Singaporean winning an Olympic medal?
Here's the bigger question....will our Paralympians be greeted with the same pomp and circumstance as the table tennis players when they return to Singapore? Will the medal winners be granted a National Medal? Will they be feted at NTUC Fairprice events? Will the PM be as effusive in his enthusiastic praise? Let's wait and see....

Sweeping Assumptions

It seems as though the residents of a middle class neighbourhood in Singapore have made some very big assumptions about the quality of some potential new neighbours. If an unused school is used as a dormitory for about a thousand foreign workers, as the authorities have suggested, then these new neighbours will overwhelm the once quiet, peaceful neighbourhood, swarming for the public buses to transport them to their work sites, invade their personal space, walking around half naked, befriending their maids, staring at them with undisguised greed, waiting to pounce on their properties, children, elderly parents etc
So what are the assumptions then?
1. These are unwashed, unclothed, unskilled labourers who work in construction sites around the island
2. They or at least a large proportion of them, are part of the criminal element that now haunt Singapore
3. They will be destroying the peace of the neighbourhood by blasting their 'boom boxes', congregating in large threatening groups and getting drunk, spitting, littering and generally being a complete nuisance.

So, where are these assumptions coming from? Have any of the petitioners ever lived in close proximity to these assumed 'menaces of the modern world'? Have they witnessed any of the acts they assume will inevitably happen if these 'foreigners' move in or have they been listening to the urban legends of their friends and reading about similar incidents in the media?

It is commendable that they recognize that these foreigners make a contribution to our economy. They in fact, do the jobs that Singaporeans look down their noses at and shun as beneath their dignity and worth. We seem to be victims of our own class prejudices! If we won't stoop to service level jobs...and these include customer service work, nursing, construction work, garbage disposal, cleaning and other 'unworthy' jobs, then can we blame the government for having to bring in people from less fortunate countries than ours to perform these tasks.
With our population, foreign and domestic, burgeoning, space is shrinking in this country.
You are going to have to get used to sharing your neighbourhood with everyone, and not just the people you designate 'worthy' of your space.

It seems that this incident is merely a symptom of what is potentially going to become described as a plague of overcrowding. If you want continued unlimited growth, then expect continued overcrowding. If you believe that this island can sustain a population of six and a half million, than this is merely a taste of what is to come. If you want the life and the nighbourhoods that you enjoy, with peace and quiet and serenity, then you also have to call on a halt or a slow down to growth....will you accept this?

Litter-ati

I read in the Straits Times this morning about our persistent litterbugs...some of whom who are supposedly 'educated' folks who litter without care in cinemas. They believe its even a right to do so...as if they were at The Raffles Longbar and casting peanut shells on the floor was a tradition. Well, its not a bloody tradition to cast your popcorn on the floor of cinema halls, you idiots!! Its just shows your breeding!! An engineer, no less, actually stated that she didnt like to 'take her litter out of the cinema because there were cleaners there to do it for her'. "After all its their job!" she claimed.
Well, Ms Engineer, who tidies up your home I wonder? I propose the following solution. Give the cleaners a week off work on full pay. Then when the cinema halls pile up with garbage so high that you can't see your favourite movie because of the mountain of popcorn blocking your view, maybe THEN you'll do something about it. Or maybe not, because in the time honoured tradition of most Singaporeans, all you'll do is complain that no one cleaned up after you! Just goes to show that we may have a really high literacy rate, we may supposedly have the 'best' education system in the world, it just doesnt seem to produce too many educated people!