Wednesday 26 December 2018

Buying Democracy (or subverting it)

In 2010, Obama commented on the Citizen's United (2010) ruling:
“Last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limits in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.”
...
His comments were drawn from Justice John Paul Stevens’ powerful dissent in Citizens United, which noted that many U.S. corporations have foreign parents that could, after the ruling, funnel unlimited amounts into American campaigns through U.S. subsidiaries. In the 2016 campaign, it’s not clear if it was Russian “companies” — or the Russian government — that was funding the efforts, but U.S. corporate subsidiaries have not yet been shown to be the intermediaries.

The simple fact is Citizens United was a poor decision, and Obama was right. It opened the US Democracy to the highest bidder.

And Putin bought the Presidency for Trump.


Saturday 22 December 2018

Thank you Malaysia

Singaporeans have had it too good.

Malaysia is here to remind us that we live in a world where silly things can happen.

Perhaps they are worried, we are not following the silly antics of Trump.

So they have a localised version just for us.

Thursday 13 December 2018

Living next door to an imbecile

In 1991, Malaysia in an abundance of diplomacy, political rectitude, prudence, maturity and wisdom decided on an operation formally called "Malindo Darasa". The airborne assault exercise was codenamed "Pukul Habis".

It was, from various opinions, analysis, and assessment, an obvious and asinine attempt to test the new SG government and PM (Goh Chok Tong had just taken over from LKY).