Corruption's "Great White Shark"

Hantu Laut

Money the roots of all evil they say. 

Corruption in government is the scourge that besieged many countries that can lead to failure of the delivery system and hampers progress and development, the building of basic services and essential infrastructure. 

Can corruption makes a progressive country become regressive?

It can, depending on the degree and how widespread it is.

In some countries jobbery has become a way of life with politicians and high level officials actively and openly involved in corruptions.

You can't completely wipe out corruptions, at best even the best government can only help reduce it. 

Human greed is something difficult to control, not only greed for money, greed for power is equally contemptuous.

The opposition Pakatan Rakyat had won the popular votes riding on the waves of its anti-corruption battle cry.

Is Malaysia really that corrupted? 

Though, made to sound as evil and bad as could be by the opposition, corruptions in Malaysia are certainly not one of the worst in the world. We are no where near any of our neighbours, with the exception of the little dot south of the Peninsula.The squeaky clean city nation stood proudly tall in the corruption index, as clean as the Scandinavian countries.

Any form of corruption is bad and every government must adopt zero tolerance on corruption if it wants a progressive society.

The corruption  index by TI (Transparency International) of Asean countries is shown below.

Country                Ranking                 Score
____________________________________
Singapore                   4                           87
Malaysia                   54                           49
Thailand                   88                           37
Philippines              105                          34
Indonesia                118                           32
Vietnam                  123                           31
Burma                     172                           15  

Depending who you asked and from which perspective one look at it. The answers can be astonishingly divergent. 

Those in government and its supporters would not view it as corruption per se, but as part of the NEP to help the Malays/Bumiputras to raise their living standards and narrow the economic gap with the non-Malays. 

All said and done, this argument do not hold much water anymore as the system have been abused to enrich those in power, their families and their cronies. It has left a legacy of institutionalised corruptions.

We are looking forward to Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's transformation policy and his promise of reducing  corruptions in government.

Read the "Great White Shark" corruption in Indonesia of a low ranking official, who has racked in hundreds of million in ill gotten gains.

Asia Sentinel

Low-ranking official running what appears to be a massive illegal conglomerate

Indonesia is so used to corruption that the steady parade of crooked lawmakers, policemen, generals, lawyers and others through the offices of the Corruption Eradication Commission and into jail hardly evokes a yawn.

But Adjutant First Inspector Labora Stores, a seemingly low-ranking cop in Papua, has pretty much stopped the country in its tracks. The Papua Police revealed that the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center, the government's anti-money laundering watchdog, had identified transactions amounting to Rp1.5 trillion (US$154 million) passing through Labora's bank accounts from 2007 to 2012.

Given his position at the sixth-lowest rank on the force, Labora earns a monthly salary of Rp8.5 million (US$870), or did until he was arrested last Saturday. He claims his wife, brother-in-law and children run PT Rotua, a timber company, and PT Seno Aid Vijay, a mining and fuel company.

Brig. Gen. Arief Sulistyanto, the National Police director for special and economic crimes, told reporters police had been investigating Labora since mid-March after seizing a boat in Sorong, a West Papua coastal city, that was carrying 400,000 liters of government-subsidized diesel. Labora was later identified as the owner of the craft.

In addition to his suspected fuel smuggling operation, Labora's wood processing business appeared to be thriving, partly by allegedly selling rare woods into China. Senior Cmdr. Setyo Budi Setyanto, the Papua Police director for special crimes, told reporters the force was also investigating Labora's alleged ownership of 115 containers of timber now being held at Surabaya's Tanjung Perak port. Read more.

Boycott The Chinese Are You Mad Or Stupid ?

Hantu Laut

About 20 Muslim/Malay NGOs have called for boycott of products made by Malaysian Chinese companies. 

I am not sure whether these people understand the ramifications of such foolish undertaking. If they do, than they need their heads examine for cracks in the skull.

Don't they realise that over 90% of retail businesses are in the hands of the Chinese and they have complete control over supply of goods and services in the country. You really do not have much choice, you either buy from them, or starve to dead.

Hypothetically, if the Chinese closed all their shops for a week, the Malays would starve, as there are not enough Malay vendors in the distribution network and scale of supply that the Chinese have. 

From toothpick, daily necessities to the heaviest machinery, you sure can't go without the Chinese connection along the supply chain.

They are the economic engines of this country and the sooner the Malays/Bumiputras accept this the better this country would be.

What they should do is try to be like the Chinese. Learn from their fortitude, diligent and resilience. 

Well, I am not going to write a lengthy article on this subject as I am sure majority of my fellow Malaysians would agree it is mission impossible.

The Chinese are not the least bit worried, they knew they have the upper hand.

Live and let live.

Let's find a better solution to our political differences. 

Tunku Aziz Beware: Karpal's DAP Official Secret Act Will Get You

Hantu Laut

Karpal Singh warned former DAP vice president Tunku Abdul Aziz to stop exposing party secrets.

Is DAP a secret society that they have too many secrets to hide and afraid of them being released into public domain? Do they have their own OSA (Official Secret Act), whereby the party can charge party members or former members for contravening the act?

How exactly is he going to take action against Tunku Aziz for telling the truth?

They talk about democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to protest, freedom to demonstrate, freedom to tell lies and freedom to do anything they want. When it comes to where it hurts them, freedom flew out of the window. 

Are they the untouchables, not of the Hindi lowest caste, but of the Mafioso type? You squealed, you are dead meat.

What a bunch of plaster saints. Hypocrisy of the highest order.

Read here Karpal threatening the Tungku.

We Were Instinctively Green ! Are You ?

Hantu Laut

I don't know who the real author of this very discerning piece of the good old days when nothing was wasted and the planet not an environmental wasteland. It has appeared all over the Internet. It's kind of nostalgic, bringing back the good old days where nothing is thrown away, nothing is wasted.

Being green was never on the mind of those years of my generation because we were instinctively green, we saved, recycled and threw nothing away. We made our own kites, tops, toys and invented our own games. Those were days of ingenuity, making do with the little we have.

Some of you may have read this, but for those who have not happy reading and thanks the older generations for not killing the environment, not until some smart-asses invented the killing machines.

Today, you go to the supermarket they have what they called "no plastic day" but they would still give you one if you pay 20 cents, a miserable sum that most people don't mind to pay.A pathetic failure. Only the supermarkets benefited making extra profit. 

The government should stop this bloody nonsense, it's no help to the environment. They should instead sell fabric or paper bag which cost much more, which will deter people from coming empty-handed to the supermarkets and to bring their own bags.

Being Green

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.” The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truely recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day. Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint. But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.