Hong Lim Park event for Gaza

I suppose most of us didn't know an event protesting the killing of civilians especially children by the IDF was held as Hong Lim Park yesterday by From Singapore to Palestine (FS2P). In fact this is the first time I have heard about this group.

According to the ST the event attracted a few hundred people. I could tell from photos that they were many Malays Muslims. After all the Gazans are mostly Muslims too.

Israel has reduced an unimaginably complex issue for us into very simple black and white terms. If you kill children, so young that they can't even tell between right and wrong so that Israel might feel secure, Israelis have to ask themselves if living has any meaning left. What is the difference between killing them and eating them in order to live? This is evil. Keep this up, you can win every battle but eventually you will lose the war and if God does not protect you, Israel would be wiped out.

Do you think killing more Hamas members will cause them to give up? Israel is not fighting militants but an idea which will not die. Even if you could kill all Palestinians, a crime of genocide tantamount to the Holocaust, Israel would not survive either. It would simply just be mutually assured destruction.

Seek peace, the price everyone is paying now is so high and will get higher that even life is too cheap. And if you don't survive in the end, what use is achieving peace through killing people?

Israel has learned nothing from the Holocaust.

The conundrum is the moment the IDF stop killing children, a simple issue immediately becomes horribly complex again. But you simply can't be killing kids. Courage and character must win over bravery and strength. Love must overcome hatred.

Update: 11:15 am

So Hamas hit the UN school killing the fifteen children and not the IDF? What does it matter? Some common sense is in order here. Just like in a heavy downpour you cannot avoid getting wet, so if you fight each other in a city crowded with civilians, people get killed. If your starting premise is wrong, everything that flows from it will also be wrong.

This is the sort of bankrupt thinking that leads only to misery and senseless suffering.

Update: 3:00pm

Not by any shot am I conceited enough to suggest that this general agrees with me, rather it is the other way round. He gets it! I think this company is also growing rapidly and I hope Israel wake up its stupid idea and stop their flawed invasion.

Bought Asus ZenFone 6 Online

Ordered this online at the Asus shop this afternoon after playing with one at Funan Centre today.

Almost two years ago when I bought the Galaxy S3, I thought I would henceforth only go for the latest smart phones. But in this short time, the technology and design of these phones have practically reached its practical limits of useful innovation. I feel that a mid range phone with a good camera is good enough for me. What I am really looking for next is a phone camera which comes with optical zoom. A Singapore start-up Dyna Optics is working hard on this.

Asus promised to deliver the phone within 24 hours of placing the order. I didn't believe them because this is the weekend and Monday is a public holiday.

I am happy to be wrong. At dinner this evening the courier smsed me that they will deliver the phone tomorrow morning!

Bought Martian Notifier

Was trying to buy two of these this afternoon but ended up with only one because elder girl was too skinny to wear this properly. Just as well, the younger one is way keener on such gadgets.....I think she has nearly got it all set up already. I can see she is clearly enjoying it very much.

Paid $189.05 at Challenger for it.

BRICs Bank: Envy and Inferiority Complex

Read this two days ago but no time to pen my quick thoughts.

BRIC and many developing countries continue to do well economically but their global influence do not reflect their wealth. Often they look like children before the age of maturity that cannot be allowed to put their hands into the trust fund they had earned. They are not waiting and there is some degree of truth that they will not get the keys to their own money and voting rights in the international arena unless they fight for them. So when you can't get your voting rights up in the IMF and World Bank, you make your own Bank. This is a very long road. Really, so what if you have lots of money stashed in reserves when money is cheap and getting cheaper. It is the wealth producing capabilities, influence and power of your society that matters. Who cares how much your money buys tomorrow? Can you produce and sell, especially name the price too now and tomorrow which really matter.

The West can be heavily indebted but oddly they much much are richer. This is absurd but true! Gotta learn how to count all over again eh?

PSC scholars changing profile

I see a young 19 year old Loh Jia Wei on a wheel chair. She is going to read Law in Oxford come October on a PSC scholarship.

PSC this year also have many scholars including two from Temasek Poly that are not from RI and HCI. PSC is walking their talk on how they are selecting scholars.

I had discouraged my girl from applying for the PSC scholarship and I am hardly alone when I talked to other parents. But they are moving in the right direction and hopefully more families will no longer think like me and my friends.

DPM Teo admitted that bringing in good people into public is more challenging now. My response is that is what happen when the government is only the top boy in a class of failing governments. The best wants to sign up with the best, and I mean the global best. A friend's son could have taken a PSC scholarship but today he is going to join Bridgewater Associates come October. He is just too many PSC had failed every year to attract.

Vinyls: Did it say, "I will be back?"

Who ever expected this? Vinyl is making its way back! I bet once the trend is with us there are no shortage of experts explaining why it happened but none was able to predict this. Likewise I have also by and large given up divining the next fad. 99.9% of the time it is too hard. Hear how it had also perplexed Indra Nooyi of Pepsco.

Very very few are able to find and bet on the next winner.

MH17 disaster: The Propaganda War

The first casualty in a war is truth.

Emotionally I have felt the Russians were guilty of shooting down MH17 but there is no solid evidence to go by except American claims that they do. The right thing to do is to wait for the evidence to be produced. After a bruising lesson of the Americans coming out empty handed for Saddam Hussein's WMD, I have had enough. Show me the evidence first.

So the West fired the first salvo in this propaganda war with Australia's PM Tony Abbott using a bazooka right into the cavern of the UN Security Council. I waited for the Russians to respond and didn't want to commit to any post regarding who dunnit on this blog. The fog of war eh.

I don't have time to collect every piece of information I come across but this is a good proxy of what is going on.

There are countless such tweets circulating with damning remarks of the separatists like the example above which I went to Google to pick up.

But what is the truth? See this video of what really happened. It was nothing like what was purported and going viral.



Well this isn't the disreputable Fox but better ABC News. Note how they describe the picture: Pro-Russian Militants Pick Through Debris at Jet Crash Site

No wonder the French is going ahead with selling those Mistral Class warships to the Russians.

Time will uncover the truth for us. We just need to be patient. What I am seeing all over the place is people looking for pieces of information to support their prejudices. Unfortunately people simply love to persist in their errors. If only they could place bets and lose like in the markets, they might learn faster. We really need to learn.