News Synchronicity

Have you noticed that almost beyond the monolithic 'news item priority' evident in virtually every single media outlet across every medium, there is a great 'flatness' descending upon the world... Apparently.

You would think that no one interesting lives on the planet anymore. And of course, the rationalists will always say that someone like me has watched too much news and has become jaded because of the quantity I have consumed.

It must be a short trip for me then, to Depression!

I notice Momofuku Ando being remembered yesterday, as the inventor of packet noodles. I noticed that because of the doodle, on Google.

Funny because, I also remembered eating Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup from a WWII supply crate of the type that used to be parachuted into the jungles where my dad was hanging out during that particular episode. These used to come in 'softpacks' of cardboard. In fact, they even had little accompanying tins made of two metals fused together that, when a ring-pull was lifted, and a hole punched at the top, boiled the water that was sealed inside them through a chemical reaction process.

I'm not sure I understand what the exact difference is, between 'Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup' (dry powder plus dry noodles) in those small portable containers - and Ando's Ramen invention.

The Campbell's version happened a lot earlier than Ando's soup.

Same as the Younger Dryas Stadial happened a lot earlier than most biblical accounts of The Great Flood, and in fact, there were two or three earlier, shorter but also pretty 'great' floods before THE Great Flood.

Plato's account of the YDS - in his Atlantis story - is dated by his Egyptian priests telling the story to exactly the correct historical (or really, pre-historical) time. And moreover, he also says the people were given warnings beforehand by smaller flood and earthquake events, though the people paid no heed.

Of course, HE says this thing was all about gods and men; not science and happenstance. 

I go by the RAND Corporation's hypothesis about the decline effect of uncovering unusual phenomenon - once you observe something in a way that is known both to the doers and the done-to or the observers, the phenomena subside, although they don't immediately disappear altogether. James Randi's challenge about Twilight Zone phenomena on the other hand, is a little different to the way RAND approaches things; he has a very narrow and constructive framework for his observations. His structure for looking at things doesn't allow for 'shades' of 'event' and so, he always observes an immediate 'stop' rather than a decline.

And by this I am not talking about observing that there is emotional content synchronicity in media reporting. I am specifically talking about going too far in exposing those who act, let's say more or less covertly in assassinating people like De Margerie and Nemtsov, and more than that, I am really specifically speaking about those who turn around and enact some retribution, or some real justice, or who take control away in order to restore by discipline, the errant leaders, back to the path of decent behaviour. The media generally does not like to face difficult facts.

Plato, I believe, couches his story about something he clearly knew to be factual, as a myth, on account of both the political dimension of it, and of people's expectations - whether of creating fear of some disastrous future, or endless demands of 'the gods' and thus a futile obsession with religion and 'the gods' as opposed to actually doing things to make something you want, happen.

Politically, there was an implication at that time, that leaders were in some way divinely appointed, but also that they were nonetheless capable of miscreant ways. And hence, the general public would always use their leaders as a 'sink' for their malaise of any kind - and never look to themselves as really responsible for anything.

Hence, it was a myth, that a great pre-Athenian society once ruled but went off the rails because of the leaders.  

Plato makes his point clear that each individual carries a kind of personal responsibility for their own futures and for the happiness of their own lives. He says that some people survived the Great Flood.

Nostalgia, What Nostalgia?

One of the great historical icons of Australia - was originally started by an American, Freeman Cobb.

Cobb & Co were the equivalent in Australia of the great stagecoach companies of America before the 'iron horse' came to rule the plains.

I've had the pleasure and the privilege of having seen one of the premium, when at their peak after the Lambing Flat gold discovery, Cobb & Co stagecoaches, and my god, it is something like an even more luxurious thing (if you can imagine it) than a Rolls Royce. It is dramatically solid, and stylish, and high-quality, and beautiful.

Simply beautiful - Japanese caliber,
battery-powered workings

Today, you can I think, still get the occasional men's aftershave from Avon called 'Cobb & Co.' 

And there is a company which makes clocks using the 'Cobb & Co' name. And they also make a very beautiful style of watch of their own design using varieties of Australian natural wood and gold or steel. 

Soon, I believe even the Postal Services in Australia will be cutting back on the 'normal' delivery of envelope mail. 

Personally I really approve of the way I see ordinary everyday people of almost every kind sitting at bus-shelters thumb-tapping away on their latest Samsung intelligent phones. People like to write and read more than they ever did; which is a good thing.

Some things you read and/or write are of course, constructed with a great deal of thought and skill and art. 

Tomorrow the 2015 Geneva Motor Show will open to the public and in it, will be the new Aston Martin Vulcan track racer. In limited numbers of maybe around thirty, this car is the equivalent of a Samsung Galaxy Intelligent Phone.

The following pic is not of the Vulcan, but it is an Aston Martin and you will not see much publicity about this edition anywhere.

Aston Martin DBC - rare,
but real...

The fact is, today, there are at least two different worlds. 

Here They Go

Today's BBC News (on-line) Magazine section has a page dedicated to '50 years of Singapore - a nation built from a swamp.'

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31626174

Seriously, here we go. It's already started. There is going to be a whole lot of utter rubbish spouted by those on the take from a criminal dictator - I mean, my god, 'we' in the West spend all of the day carrying on about the independent judiciary, the separation of powers, free and fair democratic elections - somehow Lee is spared all of this and he is the only guy allowed to get away with it... what gives?

Singapore around Keppel Harbour area
in the Sixties 

Why not throw him in the same box as say - Putin?!

A nation built from a swamp... 

Yeah all right. Never mind that the Chinese had been using Singapore as a trading port and base for maybe more than a thousand years. Never mind that the world's richest man - J. Paul Getty III constructed the world's largest oil refinery at the time at Pulau Bukom. Never mind that one of the world's largest emporiums and department stores - with refrigerated air-conditioning since prior to WWII - was in the heart of Singapore. Never mind a lot of bloody things. If the BBC says it was a swamp then hell, it must have been. Makes you wonder why the Allies spent so much money and lives trying to save the place from invasion by the Japanese as well as by the German submarine fleets and pocket battleships.

Here is a picture of Kim Philby circa the 1960's in Reuters luncheon room in Singapore.

Oh yes yes. It was a swamp all right. Not.

And wait a minute - I think we may yet be able to consult Somerset Maugham or Winston Churchill about what Raffles Place was like.

This is pretty much how I remember the Churchill Suite
at the Raffles as it was around the 1960's.
Don't about the 'swamp thing...'

But if you look at the pics on the BBC page you're going to get a totally different impression of what Singapore 'was like.' And they're basically straight out lying.

The fact is the BBC is among a whole host of consters trying to make out Lee Kuan Yew created some kind of economic and social miracle by throwing out democracy and the rule of law and making up his own rules and law-by-himself-alone.

Why are they doing this?

Lee Kuan Yew, far from creating anything, destroyed the marine lighter business, which was largely run by a different ethnic Chinese than he was, and ports managed by ethnic Indians and Parsees and Sikhs, and completely destroyed the fishing and straits to Arabian Gulf sailing business that was largely the province of the ethnic Malays since the time of Sinbad.

Lee Kuan Yew did not own or run the Shell Oil Corporation! Nor P&O or MAERSK or COSCO or Greenshields Shipping or Fraser and Neeves or Coco Cola or Plumrose or Palmolive or Unilever or the half a dozen other international corporations that had been shipping out of Singapore as the main through port for decades and certainly long before Lee - without any of the which there would be no 'Singapore economic anything!'

This bullshit that is being spouted by the modern pop media is something like a kind of payola racket. And that's all it is. The fact that they are able to seemingly get away with such bald and shameless balony about facts pertaining to a fairly recent past, is amazing to me.

Why It's important

You'll see a phrase like this in Wikipedia:

"a relatively underdeveloped Colonial outpost." This is in reference to Singapore before World War II, in the entry about Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and his life and times.

Or you'll read this kind of thing: "many local Muslim Malays were sympathetic to the Japanese concept of liberating their country from colonialism."

And so a lot of you young pups will never comprehend the insidious villainy of these types of sentences. 

Yet, Malaya and Singapore were as much 'Colonies' back then as they are national sovereigns today - they simply are not in any strict sense. They are leased lands with independent political systems legally owned by various Sultanates - none of which were originally Muslim at all - they sprang from the massive expansion of a Hindi King many many centuries ago, and all of his royal offspring became the 'Sultans' that owned and ruled over those places in the Far East and South East Asia.

It's all very well to call Singapore 'a relatively underdeveloped Colonial outpost,' but you would have had difficulty explaining that to someone from J. Paul Getty's Socony (Standard Oil Company of New York) Corporation, which had its refineries there, or to Wrigleys, or to Castrol, or Burma Oil, or to the Vesteys - who continued to install refrigerated air-conditioners in the barber and hairdressing salons and cafe bars in Robinson's and John Little's Department Stores (that were there BEFORE the war) that were the envy of even Parisian Department Store tycoons!

When Armand Hammer sent his Russian trading ships out to Singapore and Penang (and got bombed by the Nazi 'Emden' for their trouble) it wasn't because he viewed either Singapore or Penang as 'a relatively underdeveloped Colonial outpost.' 

The Sarkees Brothers hotel buildings were the envy of the entire hotel world.

And I do love how Lee claims to have decided to 'buy' a farm in Cameron Highlands. That would have been interesting as such a thing could have set you back the entire GDP of a small European nation - seeing as how they were among the best tea-growing lands in the world. Racism is this ignorant idea that because, for instance, Indians and Chinese also owned tea and rubber plantations this must have meant such things were cheap - not. There were then, as there are now, Indians and Chinese who are not only among the wealthiest and most well-educated people on earth, some of them, yee gods, even have it off with white women don't you know.

I see that yesterday's Guardian Newspaper calls Lee the first hardline government leader in Asia. 'Hardline -' what does that mean? 

It means someone who has to go out of their way to cover over criminality. 

And that is all that 'hardline' ever means when it comes to politics. Always has since the Greeks invented the word, and always will. Don't be a dummy and suppose that you are being 'tough' or 'tough on crime' or 'tough on budgetary discipline' and all of this when you support some politician who is 'tough.' Because they're not being tough for your benefit. 

The Left has its own stunning inadequacies and in today's politics it is regularly impossible to tell between the two flanks.

People who seek power... when they have the choice of immersing themselves in a computer game instead... are problematic which ever way you look at it. 

You see, if a Colonial - or say for instance today - some CIA operative sticks bamboo slivers up the fingernails of a young girl, then you prosecute them or hunt them down and arrest them. 

Or if they stuck chopsticks through the brains of the girls' fathers via their eardrums in front of them. You don't just blithely say 'I was an interpreter for the Japanese (Secret Police).'  People today do not have the stomach for the truth while they easily fall for financially-sponsored lies and propaganda. All the local Chinese other than those directly within Lee's circle knew what he was about. 

You don't say something like: 'oh, these guys were just trying to liberate young girls from old men.' Do you? Lee Kuan Yew was a criminal swine who cut the throats of anyone who stood in his way - and bribed and corrupted many many politicians, bankers, and media organisations in order to give this feted impression about him that far too many naiive people have of him.

It's a bit like saying that Sunni Muslims are helping Jihadi John because he's liberating them all from a wicked Western infidel path of unrighteousness. That's just a fucking lie.

There is no 'Singapore economic miracle.' And there never was.

Ask Getty, the Vesteys, Hammer, or the Teow Chew Chinese gold merchants Lee stabbed in the back regularly.

A Cambridge educated lawyer? My god. What a nerve. Mind you - now you know why there are many Oxford, Cambridge, and Inns Of Court people who have thrown their 'bits of academic paper' into the bin.

Not for many a long year has entrance and qualification to and from these places been for anything but money. 

Totally Lost Worlds

They say that winners write history.

Wiki Spooks, has a professionally-inserted load of crap
about the life and times of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer;
and it has been designed to muffle the treachery of Muslims against the
predominantly ethnically Hindu-Raj Sultans.  

Well, I'm not sure about 'winners' but I think what survives as 'history' must be simply strewn with bundles and bundles of lies and self-congratulation and various forms of 'spin.'

Even over as few years as forty or fifty I have witnessed the most atrocious deceits being actively portrayed all over the media - and now of course, most assuredly in things like Wikipedia - to the point where no one in contemporary generations has a single clue about the reality of their own very recent past histories. That is to say, what the truth is about their fathers and mothers and grandparents.

A lot of what you will read in Wikipedia, when it comes to biographies of recent identities, is just self-serving claptrap.

I know a lot of you will be saying to yourself - what is all this animus against someone like Lee Kuan Yew...

Well, I don't personally have any involvement in his world, but I see so many young people being led by the nose about his character and what part he played in the War and afterwards and it may be that 'history' will be very 'spun' - although possibly not, because I see a few signs of voices against his propaganda appearing all over the internet.

But in short let me just say a few simple things - not specifically about Lee himself, but about what ideas people carry about the War and Colonialism and the modern globalization phenomenon which lumps together regional national identity.

World Wars I and II destroyed a lot. And in the wake of the destruction, was a void (no more buildings, artifacts, documents, papers) into which visions were made to appear, some of which being made to look like they represented the past and history - but were nothing but exculpatory facades that covered crime and nastiness and disreputable things.

As far as Asian banking goes, Teow Chew Chinese were the main proponents. Hakka Chinese were not ever known for any kind of finance or banking at all - but that is not what you will read in modern historical accounts of things.

John Little's and eventually Robinson's
in Raffles Square, Singapore.

As far as gold and silver stockpiles in Malaysia and Singapore - apart from the significant personal holdings of various wealthy Sultanates (and not all were so wealthy) - there was only one: the basement gold and silver vault of Robinson's in Raffles Square.

Although the Japanese tried to crack into this vault, and then dynamite the doors, nothing prevailed and this vault stayed shut throughout the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Or so you would think, if you read 'modern' history. Certainly, the Japanese tortured several Chinese merchants and professionals, most to death in fact, in order to extract the safe codes and the lock opening procedures.

Well in any event, like the Roman Emperor Nero, Lee Kuan Yew had many times tried to coerce the Chinese (not Hakka) shophouse owners in Raffles Square next to Robinson's to sell to him, and by 1972 the last of several major fires completely burned down the front of Robinson's and all of the surrounding tenement shophouses following which Lee generously offered to swap these burned down dwellings for small apartments in slums, sorry, high-rise apartment buildings.

And so also today we have a massive worldwide obsession with real estate and property and central banks themselves act hand-in-glove with government fiscal policy to produce austerity measures, via which the saved dollars all go to buy bonds at a premium, thereby creating an artificial low interest rate environment in which property prices must go up all the time.

Somewhere along the line though, someone had to have had some monetary 'wedge' through which they could have effected control over the mindsets of central banks - I am speaking metaphorically if you gather what I'm saying. With respect to modern central bank policy, I don't know where exactly was the point when suddenly some accountants and policy-makers decided property was to be the ultimate goal of monetary benevolence - disregarding the lip-service to 'inflation' or employment in the foundation charters, common sense points to property values being the only real concern of central banks these days. I mean they do go to all sorts of extremes to manipulate 'data' and the structural components that derive the 'inflation' calculations.

And so too, you should realize that even in the dim, or dark and misty past of history, politicians still needed a lot of money to reach all the lobbies and sufficient of the sucker public, to grasp power.

But Lee Kuan Yew, so the story goes, was a poor but honest glued-paper vending boy.

And you can believe that too, if you want. I'll not stop you.

I'll tell you this much, though, about world property prices - without systematic theft, they cannot stay up forever. But if you like, you may believe that they will.

I'll not stop you. Put your money into that strong strong vault...