Article 114 A :A Storm In A Teacup

Hantu Laut

I agree the amendment of article 114A was hurriedly done and without giving much thoughts to its side effects.

However,  Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has agreed for his cabinet to review the controversial law and hopefully appropriate amendment will be made to replace it. 

It is only a matter of interpretation. The lawyers in this country are used to the "you are innocent until proven guilty", which in my personal opinion is a misplaced notion. You are always deemed guilty until you proved yourself innocent.

If you are deemed innocent at the time of your arrest, say in a murder case, why do they keep you in prison and bail not allowed. It can only mean they have presumptuously declared you guilty of the crime, otherwise, why the detention before the verdict?

It is still up to you to prove your innocent. If you are truly innocent and you can't prove it, too bad, you may have to go to the gallows or in countries where there is no capital punishment you are condemned to life behind bars.

Miscarriage of justice have sent many innocent men to the gallows. That's why I am against capital punishment. It is an archaic law that have no place in today's civil society and is cruel and irreversible.A verdict sending an innocent man to death is as cruel as murder itself. 

Coming back to Article 114A, the legal experts say it is a reversal of "innocent until proven guilty" which they say has become "guilty until proven innocent" unfair to those who are innocent. As I have said in a murder case, it's the same, your are considered guilty the day they charged you.

Under the law Internet users are automatically presumed guilty for any content posted through their registered networks, handheld devices, blogs and web portals.

Saying that providers of free Internet Wi-Fi for public use can be made responsible for any seditious, defamatory, or libelous article online does not hold water. Wi-Fi providers can ask clients to register before allowing them to log in to the service. Most computers have IP address and are traceable if the police do a good police work.

The most dangerous and more difficult to trace are hackers hacking into your website and posting such defamatory article on yours and other websites using your anonymous identity. The endeavour to prove your innocent can be financially draining and the trauma may be too much for those who do not have the will and money to fight back to prove their innocent. 

Remember, when cellular phones was first introduced to this country. When it was expensive, there was no problem because only the higher strata of society can afford to buy them. When it starts to become very cheap to own one and every riffraff in town can buy them, all hell broke lose.......it  became an instrument with destructive power,  which can be used to send nasty and threatening messages to people you don't like and nasty politicians knowing its 'cloak and dagger' potentials used it to spread lies,  slandering their political opponents.

In the early days of the cellphone there was no need to register your name if you buy a prepaid SIM card and no one can trace who sent those nasty messages.Now, you have to  register to buy a SIM card. The rest is history.

Initially, there were some protests from some morons but majority of the people agree it was the right thing to do.

Now, there are less evils spawning out of the cellphone.

Article 114A is a necessary evil, all it needs is some fine tuning.

PKR "turunkan harga kereta" A False Promise

Hantu Laut

From the sublime to the ridiculous. PKR's "turunkan harga kereta" campaign is a hyperbole.

PKR promise, here, of cheaper cars for Malaysians is a desperate attempt to fish for votes. The proposal is ridiculous, impractical and will have serious repercussions if not implemented gradually. This is just another empty promise that they knew could not be implemented due to economic repercussion.

We don't need more cars on our already congested roads. Reducing the price of cars drastically will have serious repercussion on the second-hand car market which may have to close down their businesses as no one would want to buy second-hand car if price of new car is cheaper.

Though, I agree the prices of cars in this country are much higher than many other countries, including developed countries, it makes more sense to first liberalise the importation of cars by gradually reducing the current AP and to finally abolish the practice completely. Anyone, including individuals who can afford to buy directly, be allowed to import their own car by applying for a simple permit from the government at a reasonable fee. 

The government can charge fee based on cubic capacity of the engine. The bigger the engine the higher the fee. The reduction in import duties should be gradual and must be done over extended period.

The present system of issuing APs to selected companies do not benefit the government as there are no revenue collected by the government. The AP have made selected Malays/bumiputras very rich and lazy.Most of the businesses end up in Chinaman's hand who make even more money. 

Most cars imported under APs are refurbished second-hand cars and under declared by importers to reduce payment of import duty. Here again, the government lost substantial amount of revenue.

I was made to understand some AP are sold as much as RM30,000.00 each. The lucky bumiputra needs only 100 APs and he can collect a cool RM3.0 million for doing fuck all. If Pakatan is serious about stamping out corruptions this is one of the many things they should abolish.

They should not be any love lost with Proton or false belief of national car and national pride.If it can't make money, sell it off, or close it down.Malaysians should not be made to pay to support this losing industry. 

The British have lost most, if not all, of its pioneering car industry, closed down or sold off to foreign interests. British Leyland, the biggest car manufacturer decades ago has ceased to exist. 

The old Malay adage "biar mati anak jangan mati adat" is not relevant in a business world. Both Proton and MAS should be considered for closure or divest to other interested party.

Of highest priority, is not price reduction of new cars, but improving the public transportation in the country.Malaysia has one of the worst public transportation system in urban and semi-urban areas. This anomaly has been neglected for decades. While our neighbours have commissioned mass transit for many years now, Malaysia is still lumbering over a system for its capital city. The project has also been met by oppositions from landowners instigated by opposition parties. 

In Singapore, no private landowners dare to protest against any project of public interest or public purposes and the government has a tough land acquisition law to deal with such opposition. There was no political sabotage of its MRT project as what we see happening in Kuala Lumpur. 

Taxis in Malaysia are one of the worst in the world. Try catch a cab during peak hours in Kuala Lumpur, if that is not bad enough, dealing with ill-mannered driver would make your blood reach boiling point. Taxis in major towns in Malaysia are old junks, uncomfortable, badly maintained and dangerous. 

Just last week the government announced the increase in maximum age of taxis from 15 to 18 years, that it says would make many taxi drivers happy. What about safety of passengers, are this no concern of the government? The government also give away free tyres to qualified taxis.

All these ad hoc handouts are pre-elections goodies that serve the public no benefit at all.

If the government is serious about improving public transport and bring down the cost of taxi fares that would bring a win-win situation for both taxi drivers and the travelling public, it must first make acquisition of vehicle for use as taxi as cheap as possible.

Remove all duties on this type of vehicle and restrict its use. The car can only be sold as a taxi and must be scrapped after 15 years. Subsidy on fuel and tyres should also be considered. 

When fares are cheap more people will use taxis and for the taxi driver, it's economies of scale, the bigger the volume the more he makes.

Taking cheap public transport is a better choice than buying a car. The lower and middle income group will have more money in their pockets to spend on other necessities.

The Rentier Leeches

Hantu Laut

Last night my wife told me how someone at a "buka puasa" she was invited to rambling away about corruptions in Malaysia, how corrupt the BN government is, how bad the government is and how Sabah was shortchanged by the Federal government. 

The usual ranting of those who rely on herd instinct instead of their own evaluations.

There are those who have from day one rode the gravy train and made tens/hundreds of millions as rentier leeches yet vehemently complained how bad their once good government was when they are no more getting what they want. 

These bunch of people think they have God given rights to plunder the nation until their last breath.

As the incumbent host appeared weaker the political leech will look for new host to continue sucking blood to nurse back its already weakening body.

Yes! We all agree there is much corruptions in Malaysia, that much is true, but Malaysia is not alone.There are corruptions everywhere, not that we should condone it, but that's the reality. As long as there are strong economic activities corruptions will be there. 

There are massive corruptions in China,  US and other countries that have gone undetected because of clever cover-ups. 

Power attract the corruptible, the corruptible attracted to power.

If you think for one moment Pakatan Rakyat government is going to clean up corruptions, you need an IQ test. 

See who is collecting all the throwaways!

The man much defended by America and the West and one who portrays himself as honest to goodness politician. An anti-corruption messiah.A man full of contradictions offering candies  to the very people he despised, the venal politicians of BN.

If you think America is squeaky clean, read on.




Comment:

Raytheon should fix this for free. There is NO EXCUSE for this failure. I could built a perimeter system for less than a million that at least would have worked. How do these fools think $100 Million for a perimeter security system is justified? There is now way to defend this waste of money. The military base in Yuma, AZ that monitors almost 100 miles of border costs less than $4 million, and has thermal tracking ability with software to automate the treat identification. How could they spend $100 million and still not even have a working system? There had to have been lots of graft in this deal. This system is controlled by the union run port authority, and I would bet that several million went straight into someones pocket at the port authority. They are one of the most corrupt unions on the planet.
Why doesn't Homeland Security run this stuff? Not that Napalitano could do any better, but isn't airport security one of their primary responsibilities? It sounds like this deal needs to be audited at least. Can someone in Congress get to the bottom of this Raytheon robbery please! As a defense contractor they should be shut down until this is cleared up at least. If they can't build a basic security system at a reasonable price then everything they do is suspect.

Read more here.

Priceless Rush on Timber

Treasure hunters have a romantic reputation. The popular perception is of Spanish doubloons, Ming Dynasty china or stolen gold bullion hidden beneath the sands of a tropical island or deep beneath the ocean. Luke Hunt reports.

However, buccaneers are increasingly hunting for a treasure with a modern day difference – timber. If the economics are right, the returns can be great.

More recently this has been evident on the Thai-Cambodian borders where poachers scouring the jungles for rosewood have lost their lives to landmines and the occasional border patrol on the lookout for people trying to make an illegal crossing.

Rain forest timber has always fetched a mighty price but amid their depletion those prices are heading even higher and this is being felt across the region, particularly on the island of Borneo which is shared between Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.

“Someone came up with the idea and it caught on,” said 49-year-old Yapp Ma Fong who casts his eye over a shimmering sea that might contain his fortune. He says luck and speed were key in the economics of his business.

“It really does depend on how fast the logs can be raised from the ocean floor and taken to the saw mill where they are cut and sorted,” he said.

Over the decades thousands of logs slipped out of reach before they could be loaded for export on ships bound for Japanese, European and American markets. Retrieving those logs from river beds and the ocean floor is big business, not unlike the recycling industry in scrap metal, plastics or glass.

The most popular timbers are tropical hardwoods and softwoods favored for a variety of applications.

Perupok is sought by piano makers to make the hammers that strike the piano strings.

Damar minyak was prized for bar tops and ramin for wood paneling in corporate offices. The Japanese organized crime ring, the Yakuza, were ardent admirers of both timbers and their orders required special shipments when cutting of rainforests boomed in the 1980s and 90s.

It was during this period that heavy machinery capable of extracting the world’s largest trees came onto the market and for the first time previously untouched rainforests were felled. The North Borneo Timber Company alone was harvesting 1.2 million cubic metres, about 300,000 logs a year, in the mid-1980s.

Ross Ibbotson, retired forest manager and historian has just completed researching the history of logging in North Borneo for a book.

He said: “If you lost seven or eight logs a load then that would be a lot, you’d hear a scream of rage from the ship’s captain when a log became entangled with the anchor and he couldn’t get rid of it.”

Politicians cowered to the demands of timber companies and reduced the rotation periods between harvests from the rain forests. Under the British a relative small number of trees were earmarked to be taken per acre every 100 years. This was reduced to 40 years in the early post-colonial governments, then rain forests were simply stripped and replaced by rubber and palm oil plantations.

Places like Sandakan, Lahad Datu, Semporna and Tawau were synonymous with logging and were part of a much wider effort to bilk the environment. Neighboring Sarawak, Indonesian Borneo and islands in the Southern Philippines ensured millions of logs were harvested, a month.

By the mid-1980s the Malaysian state of Sabah was producing more than 12 million cubic metres of timber a year. Now that figure has been reduced sharply to a still sizeable three to four million cubic metres but much of this is secondary forest timber and only used locally, not for export.

This has led to a sharp increase in prices on the international markets for rare timbers.

Lumber varies in price according to species and type. Broadly, logs are valued at between US$1,000 and US$3,000 each, about seven times more than two decades ago and as Ibbotson says, timber prices – like most commodities — are enjoying their highest levels yet.Read more.