ROE V WADE - CACOPHONY OF LIBERALS VS SILENT SCREAMS OF UNBORN BABIES

In 1973 the Federal Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) made a ruling in Roe v Wade to legalise abortion that politically placated the sexual and feminist liberation generation of the time. The decision was pinned on the court's belief that the Constitution provided for privacy of women's right. The court, in its wisdom, constrained the freedom of choice to only the first trimester (1-12 weeks); in the second trimester (13-26 weeks) the states may regulate but cannot ban abortion in the interest of the mother's health; in the third trimester (27 week till end -- post-viability period) the states can regulate or outlaw abortions in the interest of the potential life except when necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.

The Sword of Damocles came down on the liberal progressive Left last week when SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade. All hell broke loose. Look at the smiling faces in the feature photo of Liberals in their 1970s rally. The reaction of today's Liberals are out of this world. They are freaked out, berserk, unhinged, vulgar, with outright murderous intent at anyone who oppose them. Democrat leadership and influencer celebrities are braying for an uprising and inciting acts of felony. In sharp contrast, conservatives spent the last 50 years holding annual peaceful 'March Of Life' rallies against Roe v Wade, and waiting for a majority of constitutionist justices in SCOTUS to review the law.

Abortion is an issue where most people subscribe to a Manichaean view of black and white. The extreme on the conservative Right takes Catholic dogmatism of life at conception. The Liberal Left's philosophy of normative egoism progresses to a logical conclusion of a more decadent culture that is in full bloom in US in current times, an extremism that pressures for abortion on demand right up to moment of birth, in fact, even after birth in the case of a failed abortion. This extreme Left position finds support amongst even those in health services, including those who have taken the hippocratic oath to do no harm.

The extremes of 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life' is a false dichotomy that can tear the nation apart, and woefully, this US disease has potential of being exported in an internet-connected world. Middle ground has to be somewhere based on balance of science and ethics. Economics should be kept out. Dialogues to heal is only possible in an emotionless meeting of minds, which unfortunately is impossible in the US where leaders try to extract political capital out of every situation, and dark money lines the pockets of even the whitest of whites.

Roe v Wade is a touchy topic which I actually wanted to avoid. A Facebook post by an ex-nominated MP prompted me to pen my thoughts. I was appalled that a scholar can get it so patently wrong.

First and foremost, the SCOTUS ruling has nothing to do with women's rights. The decision was against the non-constitutionality of the 1973 ruling. As Justice Alito, who penned the majority decision, pointed out, the 1973 ruling was egregiously wrong. There is nothing in the Bill of Rights that confers any right to abortion. The Constitution specifically directed that any issues on privacy where it is silent, will be referred to the States. That's what the law wants and exactly what SCOTUS did last week. The issue reverts back to pre-1973 status quo where states have different laxity to abortion.

The US has Federal Laws (apply to all states) and individual State Laws. Federal laws protect the rights of all citizens which States cannot override, but if States protect more rights, State Laws prevail. (Note that both Laws protect rights. This is where the Liberal Democrats and Conservative Republicans have deep-rooted fundamental differences. Power-crazed Democrats want the power of government to confer rights, Republicans say citizens' rights are inalienable, given by God, not governments). Federal laws cover jurisdictions like immigration, bankruptcy, patents, and Social Security - rules that apply nation-wide. State laws cover jurisdictions of criminal, domestic, welfare, and real estate matters. Thus abortion cannot be codified by Federal Government, it belongs to the realm of the states.

Secondly, it is never about women's rights but the rights of the unborn. On personal liberty, everybody's rights to swing their arms ends where the other person's nose begins. In the case of abortion, every women's rights to desecrate their bodies ends where the unborn baby's feet or head begins, depending on the foetal position. The question thus falls on when is there life in the unborn. Opinions are anywhere from conception to the day of birth. It is then incumbent to rely on community decision. People in the states vote in representatives who share their opinions and craft the legislation they want.

We can all agree that it is wrong to kill a week old baby. So why is it OK to kill an unborn baby a week before delivery? Or two or three weeks? The 1973 ruling puts viability on the 27th week of gestation, based on the presumptions of the time. On June 2020,  Wong Mei Lin of Singapore, needed an emergency Ceasarian. Her baby Kwek Yu Xuan was only 24 weeks old. The baby girl is fine today. Advancements in medical science and neonatal care has given premature babies better chances of survival. Canadian James Elgin Gill was born in 1987 after 21 weeks gestation. Today, he is a healthy adult. Who is to say when life begins.

“Who is the patient if not that tiny unborn human being who can feel pain when he or she is approached by doctors who come to kill rather than to cure?” Ronald Reagan 1983

Most would equate presence of life to having a soul, whatever that means. Can science provide the answer to the question of when life begins. Medically, life should mean a status of consciousness, which resides in the cerebral cortex. It was long believed that nervous fibres reach the cerebral cortex in the 3rd trimester. Thus it was a commonly held understanding that a fetus is conscious of, or can feel pain, from about 24 weeks onwards. The issue of fetal pain is an ethical one and it is why the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling allowed states to outlaw abortion at the 3rd trimester. Ronald Reagan, as Governor of California, had passed a state bill to legalise abortion. As a conservative, the ethics of fetal pain weighed heavily on him. When he was President, he brought the fetal pain issue up as hardly anyone was talking about it. Reagan's speech coincided with the screening of a documentary film called 'The Silent Scream' that came out at about the same time. They were instrumental in reviving medical interest and discussion on the troubling ethical issue of fetal pain in abortion.

In late 2019, Stuart WG Derbyshire and John C Bockmann, both from Psychology and NUS Clinical Imaging Research Centre, National University of Singapore, completed their study called "Reconsidering fetal pain"which they published in 2020 in the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics. One of them is pro-choice, the other pro-life. Based on their research analysis, they concluded fetal pain exists as early as 12th week of gestation! This study is currently the topic of conversation in related circles.

The screaming pro-choice protesters that say the fetus is just a lump of meat of the pregnant woman should try to understand fetal pain when the doctor does a vacuum or suction aspiration abortion. The suction tube is inserted into the uterus and limb by limb is torn and sucked out. I think Calvin Cheng will agree the pregnant woman feels no pain under anesthesia, but he would be unable to hear the 'Silent Screams' of the real tiny patient.

Many may not know that in reality Roe v Wade in 1973 was a pack of lies. Jane Roe is a pseudonym and the real woman in the case was Norma MaCorvey. She passed away in 2017. The first half of her life was pitiful misery. Father disappeared, mother abusive and neglected her, sent to a relative to care for her but instead raped her every day, married at 16 and husband abandoned her on the day her first child was born, she slank to the sleazy world of drugs and sex to survive. When she was pregnant with her third child she sought the help of the state DA to abort. Abortion was illegal in Texas, where she lived then. She was asked to approach 2 lawyers who might help. Unknown to Norma, she was referred to Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, two recently graduated activist liberal lawyers. She was persuaded to lie that her pregnancy was conceived out of a rape. The lawyers took the case against DA Henry Wade all the way to the Supreme Court and won in 1973. Weddington and Coffee were the envy of their profession. Imagine 2 rookie lawyers had the chance to argue in the Supreme Court and win a historical landmark case.

Meanwhile, Norma delivered her baby in June 1970. All her 3 babies were adopted out. The sad circumstances of her life made it difficult for her to care for them. But 1973 Roe v Wade made her a celebrity for the pro-choice and she took in the status, more for the money that came her way as she was paraded around, in media and activist events. In reality, she was made use of, not that she cared. Norma herself was ambivalent about pro-choice or pro-life.

At about the same time of Roe v Wade, there was another case at SCOTUS that challenged the illegality of abortion. This was Dole v Bolton and "Mary Dole" was Sandra Bensing who passed away 2014. Whilst Roe v Wade was about abortion due to (false) rape, Dole v Bolton was abortion due to economics. Sandra already had several children and was unable to provide for a larger family. She too won her case with the decision announced on the same day as Joe v Wade, and on similar grounds of rights of privacy.

With abortion legalised, an industry evolved around it (e.g. selling tissue parts) and Planned Parenthood became a prominent national fixture. Millions of unborn babies were killed each year, funded by taxpayers' money via Planned Parenthood to the tune of billions every year. Both women, Norma and Sandra, whose cases championed a law that promoted promiscuity, had a late change of heart. When the carnage caused by the law and the dark money profits behind legalised abortion became apparent, both women had a change of heart in their later years and worked with pro-life organisations to try to overturn Roe v Wade. Norma was a born again Catholic eventually.

To the ordinary Liberal Leftists, and virtue-signalling people like Calvin Cheng, Democrats the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Charles Schumer, and many more, must be their idols who with raised fists, called for bringing SCOTUS down. These politicians couldn't care two hoots for their constituents. Democrats talk about rights to choice only in a small area -- your rights to abortion, your rights to liberalised drugs, your rights to force your kids to change sex. They don't give choices with vaccine and mask mandates, health insurance, gun ownership, minimum wages, etc. Pro-choice in abortion is just another power play for the Democrats. With polls showing a tsumani of Republican wins in the mid terms in November, and the Biden admin running out of winning narratives, Democrats are left with only the abortion card to play. Trust them to make a huge huge mountain out of it. The Wall Street Journal says it best :

"The fury of the Left's reaction isn't merely about guns and abortion. It reflects their grief at having lost the Court as their vehicle for achieving policy goals they can't get through legislatures. The cultural victories they achieved by judicial fiat will now have to be won by persuading voters. We understand their frustrations, but they ought to try democracy for a change. They might even win the debate over abortion."

Federal law, whether codified by Congress or laid down by the Supreme Court, is anti-rights. These are laws for which the people have no voice. That Democrats are talking about SCOTUS taking away people's rights with the overturning of Roe v Wade is disinformation. State laws are participatory and whatever rights are protected or denied, they are majority-based.

Leftist media is quick to play on the views of Melissa Mills, Norma's eldest daughter, who was quoted as saying her mother would be devastated with SCOTUS decision that overturned Roe v Wade. The truth is Norma had been an activist for pro-life since the 1990s. She would rejoice from beyond the grave. The last words are probably best left to Shelley Lynn Thornton, the Roe baby who was born before the 1973 law could take her life. Shelley was brought up conservative and had always thought abortion is not what she is. In her late teens when she learnt of her connection to Roe, she struggled to re-examine the issue. She does not view it as pro-choice or pro-life, just that abortion law ought to be free of the influences of religion and politics. Her words: “I guess I don’t understand why it’s a government concern.” You will never get a Liberal Leftist, nor Calvin Cheng, to have this wisdom.

NOTE: For those who want the human story in all this, click HERE to see how a mother searches for the Roe baby given away for adoption. Did the Roe mother and daughter embrace? It's a story of sanctity of life and the distress of an unwanted child.

HOW A BANKRUPT FEDERAL RESERVE BANK CHEATS WITH CREATIVE ACCOUNTING

It's a bold assertion, not a click trap title. The Federal Reserve Bank is bankrupt. It wears the facade of solvency offered by simple creative accounting. A company goes bankrupt when it piles up losses that wipes out its capital and reserves. When this happens to some big corporations, it makes headlines. This is happening to the Fed but we can hear a pin drop in the silence.

To make the article digestible, I economise on the details and use broad strokes as much as possible.

First, some background on the Fed. It is not owned by the government, but an independent entity. It was created by the Federal Reserve Act 1913, tasking it with operating the US reserve banking system and managing the monetary policy to maintain full employment and price stability (i.e. inflation). The country is split into 12 districts with a Federal Reserve Bank in each district known as District Banks. Collectively we call them the Fed for short. The shareholders of the District banks are the various commercial and mutual trust banks operating in the respective  districts. A Board of Governors oversees the running of the Fed. Members elect their representatives to the Board, except for the Chairman who is nominated by the US President. The Chair does not report to the President.

The District Banks are not for-profit entities and its operating financial is basically :

                  Interest Revenue
    LESS:    Interest expenses          
                  Net interest
    LESS:    Operating overheads 
                  Net income               

Interest revenue comes from its SOMA portfolio and in their lender of last resort activities. SOMA (Securities from Open Market Account) are the fix-rated securities the Fed purchases in the QE (Quantitative Easing) and sells in QT (Quantitative Tightening). Lender of last resort is very short term (mostly overnight) to supply liquidity to the money market and is basically reverse repo (these are securities purchased with a resell commitment, often overnight, under a Repurchase Agreement).

Interest expenses is the interest the Fed pays to banks for balances on their Reserve Accounts. These are cash deposits commercial banks, by regulation, have to place with the Fed for liquidity purposes to prevent bank runs. In addition to this, the Fed has to pay for its funding cost for the reverse repos. The Fed pays at market rates.

By Law, the earnings are distributed firstly by dividends of 6% to shareholder banks.The dividends are cumulative. The payout to the larger shareholders have been revised and reduced to less than 6% fluctuating in accordance with a formula. The remaining balance, 10% goes to a surplus capital account and 90% to the government Treasury. The surplus was supposed to build to 100% of paid up capital, but has been revised down to US$6.875B which has by now been reached.

Shareholder banks have a liability of  absorbing the Fed's losses up to 2 times the amount of their stock holdings.

The Fed's annual operating expenses is estimated at US$9B. It thus needs to generate net interest in excess of this sum to turn a profit which it has consistently managed to do in the past purely on its reverse repo transactions. With huge balance sheet built up in recent years, its massive SOMA portfolio enabled Fed net interest income to increase substantially since 2009.

All investors who are unhedged in a leveraged long fix-rated assets worry about their interest rate mis-match risk. A rise in interest rates means their cost of funds increases, and net interest deteroriates. It's a rate risk they carry that can bury them. But the Fed is not a normal entity and has absolutely no worries about their net interest line. What makes them a different animal?  The fact is, the Fed acquires their securities in their QE exercise by printing money. They have no carry cost to worry about.

After the US housing crisis of 2007 the Fed pursued a relentless policy of QE, printing money as a stimulus to the economy. The above chart shows the Fed began to grow balance sheet size tremendously from 2008 at US1T to plateau in 2014 at about US$4.5T. During the pandemic it took a J curve up the chart as the Fed printed money like crazy. The SOMA portfolio as at 31 Mar 2022 was US$8.8T.

We call QE printing money because the Fed purchases securities and pays for them by simply crediting the sellers' banks reserve account. This way the Fed pours money into the market hoping the increased liquidity will stimulate the economy.

The big problem this massive SOMA portfolio presents is its valuation. The securities are fix-rated. The price of these securities move inversely with market interest rates. When interest rates fall, the prices of fix-rated securities rises and valuation increases, registering unrealised gains. Inversely, when interest rates rise, the prices of these securities falls and valuation decreases, causing unrealised losses.

,

Let's use the Fed rates to approximate market rates. The Fed started to increase interest rates in Jan 2021. As at 31 Dec 2021, Fed financials show it was sitting on unrealised gains of US$128B. By 31 Mar 2022 its securities valuation had turned into unrealised losses of US$330B. This means in Q1 when rates started rising, the losses registered was US$458B. The expectation is for the Fed rate to hit 2.75% by year end, so valuation losses could possibly hit US$1T for full year 2022.

The Fed's paid-up capital currently is US$35B. Add the US$7B surplus its Equity is US$42B. The Federal Reserve Act requires shareholder banks to absorb losses but limited to 2 times their stock holdings. This means there is a contingent capital of US$70B to fall on. The Q1 valuation loss of US$456B has totally wiped off the equity of the Fed, including the contingent capital. Any other company would be as dead as the dodo bird under the circumstances, but no, not the Fed.

The only way out is to cheat. Under IFRS and GAAP (international and American accounting standards), all financial institutions have to provide for valuation losses of financial instruments that can be marked-to-market. The Board has chosen, in contravention of legislation and accounting standards, not to recognise unrealised valuation gains and losses. Its capital will thus remain intact in financial statements. The unrealised losses are put on "deferred" status, on the rationale it will be cancelled out when interest rates fall in the future. They are taking the very long term investment return view. Have we not heard of this before, in Temasek's financial reports, whenever the ROI for the current year sucks.

As the Fed manages price stability, it would be constantly doing QE or QT and increasing or reducing Fed rates as it fine tunes market liquidity. Hence under normal circumstances, its SOMA portfolio would be a process of building up and liquidations. It follows therefore that unrealised gains or losses will more or less square off and "differing" unrealised valuation lossess/gains is reasonably justifiable. However, the fact shows that since 2009, it has been unable to reduce balance sheet size. What confidence is there that at US$8.8T it is able to do so now? 

Over time, if interest rates do not fall to a level that will neutralise the valuation losses, there is the inevitability of the losses being realised when the securities are sold or matured. Thus the situation is dependent on (1) the Fed's decision to use QT to fight inflation and (2) the ageing, or maturity profile of the SOMA portfolio. The Fed has not yet started QT, but it has indicated that it will shrink balance sheet by US$30B a month.

Will this unrealised losses have a play on the monetary policy decisions of the Fed? Think about this. Raise interest rates (which tightens liquidity) -- and get hit with increased valuation losses but which won't impact Fed net income since unrealised losses are not recognised. Or do QT (tighten liquidity by selling securities) and get hit by realised valuation losses. The governors sitting in the Board also run their own commercial banks. Will they vote for QT to get their banks to absorb Fed realised losses?

Read : Why the US which has a US$30.5T public debt, has no reserves, but it will never go bankrupt, technically.

On maturity of the securities, if interest rates have not fallen back to 31 Dec 2021 levels, the valuation losses will be realised. This is inevitable. So the question is how long will interest rates remain at current levels and in fact, will it rise further? This depends on the economy.

If inflation, the tools are QT and rate increases. Both Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have said the inflation is transitory but have since taken this back. It now seems it will be a long inflation. Powell has said he is dead serious on fighting inflation. With inflation now at 8.6%, some says the Fed has done too little too late. A Volcker style massive increase in interest rates may be necessary to tame the beast. Yet others say, it's too late. The horse has already bolted. The economy is already in recession.

If recession, the tools are QE and reduce interest rates, thereby increasing liquidity to stimulate the economy.

Both the Purchasing Managers' Index and the Consumer Confidence Index that came out recently, showed low market expectation. Yet last week, all market indexes, including crypto, rebounded and made some recovery. This could well be due to Powell's presentation at Congress where he indicated the Fed is still fixed on possibility of achieving 5-10 year long term inflation of 2%. In the Consumer Confidence Index, market expectation is an inflation of 3.1%. Investors are not worried of 2% or 3% inflation. That's probably what drove the market up last week. Which suggests the market was driven by a longer term view and ignored the short term reality. But is that what other data points are indicating? A critical data is the employment levels. Unemployment claims were up slightly, indicating a slide into recession. 

This digression into inflation is just to show that there is no clear path to how the huge unrealised valuation losses can be resolved.

Now let's do some thought experiment. When securities mature, valuation losses are realised. The government as issuer, must now pay the Fed at face value of the securities. The Treasury is broke. It issues new securities and use the proceeds to redeem the matured securities from Fed. The government rolls over the debt. The can is kicked further down the road. But what happens if the US government securities are no longer in demand?

Any ordinary investor would be forced to write off a bad debt if there is no way to recover it. But the Fed is no ordinary investor. The government has defaulted on the securities redemption. It now owes the Fed. Normal accounting standard requires the Fed to write off the bad debt (unless the Fed seeks to take over some fighter jets or aircraft carriers, etc). But the fact is the Fed never funded the acquisition of the securities in the first place. They merely printed money for it. So how can the Fed have valuation losses or write off losses? On the other hand, the Treasury received cash for the securities it issued and must now redeem them on maturity.

There is a joke about accounting being the only profession where creativity can land one in prison. The Fed now requires some creative accountants to solve the accounting mess in the ledgers of the Treasury and itself to clear these matured but un-redeemed securities and valuation losses. Fiat currency sure seems like magic money or some ponzi scheme from central bankers' point of view.. However one looks at it, if the Fed is a casino, the house is broke.

WHY THE US WILL NEVER GO BANKRUPT, TECHNICALLY

We are witnessing the collapse of the American society. The country is irreversibly divided with one side desiring a fascist and decadent social structure, and the other a fundamental conservatism of their founding fathers. The political differences explode at the same time with a financial avalanche crashing down on them as decades of irresponsible deficit spending living off the fat of foreign countries is coming to an end. The US$30.5T national debt is coming home to roost.

Watching the tumultous and bitter political conflicts going on in the US, the Ukraine War, energy crunch, supply chain problems, global inflation, and oil trade in ruble and yuan, there is much talk about the impending bankruptcy of the US. The US has no reserves to service their humongous debt. Yet, impossible as it seems, the country will not go bankrupt, technically.

A person, company or other legal entity, is insolvent when they do not have sufficient assets to meet their obligations as and when they fall due and are liable to be sued for bankruptcy.

In the case of a country, it is different. A country can go bankrupt under two situations - when the debts are in foreign currencies, and when it has no monetary sovereignty. An insolvent country would have run out of reserves to acquire the foreign currencies to pay for public debt and thus go bankrupt. Monetary sovereignty means the capability to manage its own monetary policies. Without the legal right to manage the value of its own currency, the country cannot respond with the appropriate monetary policies. Countries in a monetary union have no monetary sovereignty. The countries in the European Union surrendered their monetary policies to the European Central Bank. In their national debt crisis of 2007, Greece had to accept the severe austerity measures imposed by the EU central bank and suffered greatly.

A country that has monetary sovereignty and public debts in its own currency, can never go bankrupt. It simply prints more money to pay off its debt. If the country runs out of reserves, the central bank simply monetises the debt by crediting the receiving banker's reserve account in settlement. It's as simple as that.

Monetising the national debts of course has its problems. The massive liquidity caused by the excessive money printing guarantees inflation and currency depreciation. Inflation means decreased purchasing power, or loss of wealth. The central bank monetising the debt means it is the public that ultimately pays for it via inflation. But the country is technically never bankrupt.

Read : The Singapore government does not want you to know the MAS is printing money for Covid-19 aid package

In the case of the US, their national debt is all in US$ in the form of government securities - bonds and treasury bills. If China's holdings of US$1.05T were to mature and they present if for redemption, the Federal Reserve will simply monetise it by crediting the Bank of China's (the Chinese central bank) account in settlement.

The US is unique in being the only country in the world without a central bank. The Federal Reserve is not a government agency. It is a private enterprise created by the Federal Reserve Bank Act, owned by member banks, and tasked with maintaining full employment and price stability for the country.  The US government itself (Treasury Dept) does not create any money. The government takes on debt for its spending needs by issuing bonds or treasury bills. The national debt piles up because in its history, the US government has never made any repayment. Maturing securities are simply rolled over - they are redeemed by the proceeds of fresh issues. The printing of US$ is by the Federal Reserve in their Quantitative Easing when they purchase government securities and pay for it by crediting the selling banker's reserve account in settlement, thus throwing more money into the market to stimulate the economy.

The practice of rolling over matured securities can go on as long as there are demand for new issues. We are in an era where confidence in the US and its currency is at an all time low and efforts at marginalising the dollar is in play. The time will come when demand diminishes and maturing securities need to be repaid. The Fed will have to monetise maturing securities, causing inflation and a problem of how to resolve the indebtedness with the Treasury. When the Fed monetises the debt, the Treasury's obligation transfers from the security holders to the Fed. This is virgin territory, never legislated, but trust the Fed to provide some creative accounting solution to resolve the indebtedness between them and accounting in its ledger and that of the Treasury.

Read : The Federal Reserve Bank has its capital wiped out by unrealised valuation losses as it tries to battle inflation by increasing interest rates.

MAY I HAVE A CUP OF FREE TEH-O-KOSONG?

 

Recently, an innocent post by retired architect Prof Tay Kheng Soon got lambasted by the Speaker of Parliament. A jovial post, all in light-hearted good fun, saw an over-bearing response from one that rules over us who spilled the delectable teh all over the table.

Prof Tay Kheng Soon:
"I had lunch yesterday at a malay family coffeeshop restaurant in Permas Jaya surburb of JB for a special johore laksa, very different from what we are used to. The atmosphere was very happy friendly. Come paying time they just ask you what you ate and you say you ordered such and such and then pay accordingly. They trust you. After paying i suddenly wanted a teh oh kosong, asked how much the cashier similingly said, "i belanja you"! So different! Wonderful feeling! This is Malaya all over again. How different, we have become so money- minded in Singapore!"

Speaker, Brigadier-General Tan Chuan-Jin:
"What I find amusing and sad is how some Singaporeans use their anecdotal experience in Malaysia, such as some coffee shop owner offering free drinks, to pull down our own nation and who we are as a people. There are many kind and generous souls here too btw. And the usual folks jumping on board to wax lyrical about how great it is on the other side of the causeway and how poorly we are in comparison. But they are entitled to their views.
We are certainly not perfect and can be better and will improve. But I’m proud to be a Singaporean and don’t spend my time running my own country and people down.
And of course there are the usual suspects that celebrate their politicians…Oh well.

1. By referring to "some Singaporeans" instead of TKS by name, the Speaker insults multitudes of Singaporeans. He makes a mountain out of a molehill. Don't we all make comments similar to TKS? We visit countries all over the world, don't we make comparisons of the good, the bad and the ugly?

Is the Speaker trying to shut us all down the way he famously shut down that young undergraduate in a public dialogue session for an inconvenient question some years ago?

2. By using 'anecdotal' he spits on your personal experiences as questionable. Did TKS really have his free teh-O-kosong? Are we deplorables, not to be trusted with a narration of our simple experience?

3. "So different! Wonderful feeling! This is Malaya all over again. How different, we have become so money- minded in Singapore!" This comment of TKS pissed the Speaker who likens it to "pull down our own nation and who we are as a people." Really Mr Speaker Sir?

Firstly, why so touchy? Have we grown so sensitive to little innocuous jabs? My life experience, or anecdotes as you prefer,  tells me the guilty ones recoil at innocuous truths. The innocents simply laugh it off.

Secondly is it not a fact we are now so money-minded? Grace Fu's S$470,000 garbage bin centre says it all. Do you remember your own negative reaction to the 'promotion' to Speaker position which was a 'demotion' of pay scale by 53%? Maybe you can take the opportunity to disclose if there has been any side-arrangements to compensate you? If there isn't any, then I feel for you, really.  How about multi-millionaire ministers - will they consider a pay-cut to help out the fiscal which I understand an increase in GST is necessary to balance the budget.

Thirdly, TKS mentions "Malaya" whilst you twist it to "Malaysia". TKS alludes to the past, a time of sitting under coconut trees, where community spirit was high and people less touchy. You bring in the politics in "Malaysia".

4. "There are many kind and generous souls here too btw." Tsk tsk that you needed a straw man. Did TKS say there aren't any kind souls in Singapore? You would be right to chide TKS for suggesting there are no smiling cashiers in Singapore, and no coffee vendors who will belanja anyone a free teh-O-kosong. But to bring in a whole gamut of Singaporeans who make generous contributions to the needy is a disproportionate attack against a kind teh tarek stall keeper across the causeway.

5. "We are certainly not perfect and can be better and will improve." Ahhh a rare bit of humility. That is good. But is that patently Singaporeans only? Certainly it applies equally to Malaysians and everybody else, right?

6. "I’m proud to be a Singaporean and don’t spend my time running my own country and people down." That's very good Sir. We have a crisis of inflation and CECA issues, I'm just wondering how you found the time from your busy schedule to criticise a good old professor on Facebook for a simple innocent tid bit of his day.

6. "And of course there are the usual suspects that celebrate their politicians".
Oh really Sir? Naughty, naughty.
Do you have a list of suspects?
So you do have AI and surveillance?
Am I on that list?
Are we not allowed to praise Malaysian politicians where they have done well, or other politicians for that matter? Psst I noticed you have praised lots of other foreign politicians and dignitaries when they visited Singapore and your office. How come?
Are you disparaging those Singaporeans who say things that you disagree with?

I reminisce my days in the Army. When a soldier says something that the superior doesn't like, out comes "Stand to attention when you speak to me, soldier!"  In contrast and to round off, here's Prof Tay's response to the Speaker's post. It's a class act.  I really hope we can see more of this from the men in white. Wishful thinking I know.

 

THE SEARCH FOR THE HEAD OF THE COVID RACKETEERING SNAKE - COMPANIES OF INTEREST

Many feel there is something wrong with this current pandemic but just cannot quite put their finger on the sth. Truths are concealed, disinformation (deliberate deception) are propagated, mis-information (incorrect and misleading, but without agenda) is pervasive, public discourse is suppressed, and vaccine dissidents are ostracised and hounded out of jobs and their homes.

There is a huge racketeering going on which is basically profits motivated, and concurrently political gamesmanship, mostly in western countries, taking advantage of the pandemic, risking brinkmanship for a Hobbesian nightmare. This blog deals solely with the first part of racketeering. Organised crime is like a snake and we have to find the head of the snake.

English has its quirks. Racketeering is not a present participle, but a noun. It refers to dishonest and fraudulent dealings at an organised level. The Palermo Convention is a UN initiative against transnational crimes, but not many countries have fulfilled their obligations under this. Almost all countries direct their anti-organised crimes efforts in the areas of triads, drug trade, money laundering and human trafficking. In these, the efforts are mostly at breaking the organisational structure.

US has a specific law against organised crime called The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. This allows for enhanced penalties AND civil course of actions, meaning 'we the people' has standi locus. Only the Philippines has legislated something similar to the RICO act. It is thus to the US that we look for answers. In the current environment it is easier to move a mountain than to get the FBI or DOJ to investigate. RICO allows a civil course of action and there are several private initiatives that are moving in this direction. It is appropriate American civilians rise to the ocassion for it is in the US that the racketeering germinated.

In the words of Dr David Martin Phd., CEO of M.Cam, an asset underwriter and analyst company, this racketeering is about "a last hegemonic grasp of an industry, that set out in 1984, to build a singular model of what health was - the genetic manipulation of an organism to build a perpetual dependency on a pharmaceutical industry." I shall split the article into 3 parts. This is the 1st part and let's dive right into it and introduce a few companies which most people are unlikely to even know about.

We have all been told about Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Astrazeneca. WHO, Bill & Melinfa Gates Foundation, and Global Alliance for Vaccine Immunisation (GAVI). These are the frontline guys that everyone are familiar with and there is nothing further to add from me.

Advanced Technology International Ltd (ATI):

ATI of South Carolina was incorporated in 1998 and acquired by ANSER in 2018. It is basically a government contracting and procurement company that handles projects involving collaboration with a consortium of industry players in technology development. ATI is a non-profit, public service company. It was not a major operation when it was used in development of utility apps like warehouse management. All this changed in 2016.

On 8 Apr 2016 ATI received a contract for US$10b from US Army to be issued over 20 years to Medical CBRN Defense Consortium. (CBRN = chemical, bioweapon, radiation, nuclear.). This pool of funds was to be used for coordinated planning and research and development prototype efforts in support of the mission of JPM-MCS (Joint Project Manager-Medical Countermeasure Systems). The main focus for these funds is in 3 areas:
1. Detection: Systems and devices to identify CBRN agents and assist in making medical decisions
2. Prevention: Prophylaxis, pretreatment, and post-exposure prophylaxis
3. Treatment: Therapeutics (post-exposure, post-symptomatic)

The use of ATI mechanism serves the purpose of avoiding Congressional oversight and non-transparency. Not much is known of how the money was spent and how was it spent. Only a Freedom of Information Act request by watchdog groups American Oversight, Accountable Pharma, and Lower Drug Prices did the public learnt the following benefits provided under Operation Warp Speed:
* Novavax: $1.6 billion
* Pfizer: $1.95 billion
* Sanofi: $1.79 billion
* Johnson & Johnson: $1 billion

Operation Warp Speed was announced on 15 May 2020. Rome was not built in a day. Certainly Pfizer et al could not have produced those vaccines in a matter of months. It must have taken them years to develop,  patent technologies, test, and then scale their production, long before SARS-Cov2 appeared. How much was spent on these parmas in pre-Warp Speed days?

To have medical bio-terrorism countermeasures we need first to have bio-weapons. Does anyone remember on 25 May 2015 the US Navy announced they shipped by mistake anthrax spores to 9 labs in the states and an air-force base in South Korea? How about the letters laced with anthrax spores sent to the offices of various congressmen in 2001 after the 9/11 attack? It showed the US has active bioweapon research programmes which are illegal. The good intention on developing therapeutics for emerging diseases must first work with the bad intention of creating new pathogens. It can be safely assumed ATI is where Fauci drew the funds to drive his gains of function research on the coronavirus, and several other pathogens. Did they use this to fund the 46 secret biolabs in Ukraine? God forbids what other diabolical viruses they may be involved in.

Read : The novel genetic vaccines cause and/or accelerate the Creutzfedlt-Jacod Disease (CJD) which is a death sentence.

Analytics Services Inc (ANSER):

Anser was incorporated in 1958 as a non-profit. Like ATI it has a public service charter. And just like ATI, it thrives in opaqueness and without Congressional oversight.

It's primary role is supporting senior leaders of their federal customers in oversight and decision-making by providing timely and accurate information and analyses. Basically, it is in brains services. Anser produces no physical goods, but in terms of contracts landed, Bloomberg ranked it as the biggest federal contractor in 2017, ahead of any military industrial complex big guns like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Gumman, Raytheon etc.  Anser is super duper big.

What is interesting is a couple of dates in the company's evolution. Anser started off providing support services to the Air Force. In 1976 it expanded its services to various defense components of the State Dept. In the 1980s it expanded into health systems and radioactive materials. Dr Ruth David, an engineer, was CEO 1998-2015 and Anser's vision took a turn. David came from CIA where she was Dy Director of Science and Technology, overseeing a number of engineering test facilities. She moved Anser from simply analysis and research, into leveraging its position of disseminating and exploiting information.  In 2004, ANSER set up Homeland Security Institute, a federally funded think tank tasked with addressing national policy and security issues using scientific,technical, and analytical expertise. David was succeeded by Carmen Spencer, a science graduate who has military background and strong experience in chemical and bioweapon defense related areas, mostly in acquisition, logistics and technology. Under Spencer, Anser's footprint expanded into chemical and bioweapons threat reduction domain. Anser acquired ATI in 2017. According to Spencer, ATI allowed Anser to extend its reach and cost reduction advantages.

Did the CEOs do what they are supposed to do - provide vision and direction to drive the company towards greater efficiency and improve value for shareholders, the way for-profit corporations work? But Anser is a non-profit company in public service. So were the CEOs brought in specifically to drive the company towards mission capability objectives pre-determined by the government? Most likely so.

Anser has evolved from a purely supporting role to a monolithic presence in more covert functions whose expertise has perhaps been channeled towards darker ends under a progressive administration that has taken on Marxist and dictatorial colours. The acquisition of ATI is clearly seen as bringing the whole non-oversight federal purchasing programmes under one roof.

Fors Marsh:

Incorporated in 2002. This is private for-profit enterprise and a registered government contracting firm. It is basically the PR guy - the ones to do research, data collection, content messaging for behavioural change, design strategy for outreach and execution of the promotion campaigns.

Fors Marsh made it into the Financial Times' List of Fastest Growing Companies in US for 3 years running 2019 to 2021. It made it on the back of federal contracts relating to 2020 elections and Covid-19. Regarding the pandemic, they won 2 contracts worth US$400m. It worked with federal agencies like DHS, FEMA, CDC, NIH and media and other promotional agencies to develop and execute public awareness and education campaign to disseminate accurate public health information regarding COVID-19 and ways to reduce its spread.

If you wonder why mainstream media all have same talking points - Fors Marsh arranged that. If you think there was a lot of propaganda -- they are the one. If you see this celebrity, or that sports person, or some social media influencers mouthing government narratives -- they are the ones behind it. If you find this hospital or that university professor pop up and present charts and tables -- yes, you got it, Fors Marsh again. Did Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey wake up one morning and decided Facebook and Twitter will censure any mention of Ivermectin? You get the picture.

Palantir Technologies:

Palantir is a public listed corporation in the business of big data analytics. It offers several software and the one of concern here is something called Gotham. If 'Gotham' evokes something dark and sinister, it is not just the marvel comics fan in you. There is something ominous in all this.

In very basic terms, as Bloomberg puts it in a 2018 feature headline "Palantir knows everything about you". Your phone calls, your outstanding electricity bills, your hospital visits, your MRT trips, your kids' nursery school, your social media friends, your academic background, who you worked for, the age of your nieces, which banks you use, your visa card spendings, the name of the wife of your friend's friend's third uncle, which colleague you spend the most time with, where were you at 10am on the 10th of October 2020, and oh, have you taken the 3rd Moderna booster, etc, etc, they know.

Palantir mines data bases and synthesizes them, turning mountains of chaotic data into gold nuggets. From wildly diverse massive data sets, it links relationships and presents information in spiderweb structures of graphic databases. It is an intelligence platform designed for security agencies for war against all sorts of threats -- terrorism, human trafficking, domestic terror, hackers, drug trafficking, etc It is in short a great tool for spies.

Palantir itself does not do the spying. It merely uses its AI algorithms to bot scrape through massive data bases provided by the client. For example the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services uses Palantir to detect Medicare fraud, the FBI uses it in criminal probes, the Department of Homeland Security deploys it to screen air travelers and keep tabs on immigrants, Police Departments use it to keep tab on criminals and be ahead of potential crimes, Military Intelligence use it to keep tab on targets of interest anywhere in the world (in fact it had a role in the tracking of Osama bin Laden), etc. Government Agencies are prime customers. The CIA in fact helped provide seed money and co-operation in its early days, and remains invested both as shareholder and user.

But what has Palantir got to do with our story here. Well the NIH and CDC are also their customers. Palantir software is used in vaccine distribution and case management, registration of the vaccinated. There is great fear the One World agenda leads to Vaccine ID or passport and credit standing or social credit scoring system where any non-compliance means service denial. If there is such vaccine tyranny initiative, Palantir will be the great enabler. This fear is so great in UK the public went to court to eject Palantir from the British National Health Services. They failed. If you think vaccine tyranny is a conspiracy theory, some Chinese have had a taste of it recently. In the recent provincial bank runs, some folks planned a protest demonstration in the city of Zhengzou. When they left home their mobile vaccine apps showed a green status for vaccinated. Upon arrival at the city, their Covid health status turned red. Means no hotels or restaurants will admit them. (CNN 15 Jun 2022)

Just a bit of human interest here. Peter Thiel (of Pay-Pal fame) is the co-founder of Palantir. He has taken a strident political stand against progressive liberalism, contributes significantly to the Republican Party, and is currently trying to build a conservative media platform. Yet Thiel, an early investor and director of Facebook, remains on the board of the company that is trashing Freedom of expression, and in Palantir, runs a company that tramples on peoples' personal privacy.

It is difficult to locate the Covid Leviathan, much less seeking its head. But familiarity with its environment and the way it moves, helps us to understand more about the nature of the beast. In the follow up blog, I'll go over some personalities and inconvenient dates.

WHO IS THIS CELEBRITY? WHAT AILS HIM?

Facial paralysis - a Ramsay Hunt syndrome

In layman terms, we call this affliction shingles. Shingles is a viral infection caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VZV). This is a herpes family virus. If you never have chicken pox before, you don't have to worry about this. Shingles are very painful as it affects the nerves.

The percursor infection is chicken pox which is caused by the same VZV. Although shingles can occur anywhere on your body, it most often appears as a single stripe of blisters that wraps around either the left or the right side of your torso. I recall old grandmother's tales of this eruption on the body as a 'snake' (due to it's linear structure) and how villagers were terrified if it coils around the body, an event which spells death. Actually, this idea of wrapping around the body never occurs. VZV traverse a band of nerves, which is localised on either side of the body.

A shingles outbreak may affect the facial nerve near one of your ears. This can cause facial paralysis and hearing loss in the affected ear. This form of outbreak is called Ramsay Hunt syndrome.

There is risk of permanent facial muscle weakness and deafness from Ramsay Hunt syndrome. Signs and symptoms are:

* Facial weakness or paralysis on the same side as the affected ear
* Ear pain
* Hearing loss
* Ringing in your ears (tinnitus)
* Difficulty closing one eye
* A sensation of spinning or moving (vertigo)
* A change in taste perception or loss of taste * Dry mouth and eyes

As chickenpox is very contagious, most people have this in their childhood years. For example, in US, 90% of the Americans have had chickenpox. When you have chickenpox, you develop antibodies that keep VZV to lie dormant in your dorsal root ganglion (some part of your nerves). The viruses may be re-activated to cause shingles outbreak.

How does VZV get re-activated?  When you loose cellular immunity as you age, when you have medical conditions or take medications that suppress the immune system. Hormonal fluctuations due to post-pregnancy and menopause may also cause the re-activation. Thus it is normal to see shingles in older folks when their acquired immunity diminishes. Are the genetic vaccines for Covid19 a problem? Very much so because one of the adverse effects of the jab is AID - acquired immunity deficiency. There are various viruses that are dormant in our body, either held in check by innate immunity or acquired antibodies. AID caused by the jab diminishes your immunity, causing viruses that have remained dormant to re-activate. One of these candidates is VZV. These are facts, not mis-information.

Read: New studies that prove the genetic vaccines cause the brain disease Creutxfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD) which is a death sentence.

This young man is Justin Bieber, the famous pop star. He informed his fans recently he has been diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome and had to cancel his world tour. What could possibly be the cause? Obviously, he has had chickenpox before. He is 28, obviously his VZV re-activation is not a case of diminished immunity due to old age. He has no prior medical condition for which he was taking medications. He certainly was never pregnant (although we are told in the Biden era, American males can get pregnant) nor is he in his menopause years. Hmmmm I wonder what is the elephant in the room.

When mis-fortune strikes, it often comes in multitudes. A few months back, Justin's wife, 25 year old model Hailey Bieber, was hospitalised and diagnosed with blood clots in her brain.

Doctors are of course, puzzled what caused their ailments. It seems like there are 2 elephants in the Bieber household. But when such events happen to celebrities, would it help to educate their fan base to beware of elephants? Nah... they are more concerned when will his world tour be on again.

BREAKING NEWS - NOVEL VACCINES CAUSE AND/OR ACCLERATE CREUTZFELDT-JACOB DISEASE

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a death sentence

White hat scientists have warned of impending explosion of vaccine-related health issues, of re-appearance of latent diseases and emergence of new forms of diseases. We have seen healthy young males and females collapsing or plain dropping dead on sports fields, on TV, probably in airplane cockpits (single-pilot planes), behind the wheels of moving vehicles (vehicular accident rates are increasing everywhere). We have seen rising numbers of cases of cancers and stillborn babies, HIV cases, unusual forms of hepatitis, monkey pox.... what else is in store?

Just as white hat scientists warned of rising neurological diseases, we now have a prion disease called spongiform encephalopathies or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). It is a rare, degenerative, fatal brain disorder. It takes decades before symptoms appear at about age 60, with death within a year. In the early stages of the disease, people may have failing memory, behavioral changes, lack of coordination, headaches, dizziness, and visual disturbances.

Prions are misfolded proteins. A protein is a linear string of 20 amino acids which folds into a particular 3-dimensional shape known as its native shape. In regular cell activities, a protein can become misfolded making it dysfunctional and even toxic. These are bad guys. Our body regularly gets rid of them. Prions have a gain of function, the nasty ability of making other nearby proteins to similarly misfold, thus causing cellular dysfunction. It is the number one suspect for causing various neurological diseases. It's a seldom known fact to the layman that diseases are caused not just by viruses and bacteria, but prions as well.

It was only in late 2020 when US scientists from Harvard Medical School first reported a Covid-19 patient with CJD symptoms. (see Michael J.Young et al Oct 2020) The immune system responses to SARS-CoV-2 by a cascade of systemic inflammatory mediators. Young et al hypothesised that these responses accelerated the pathogenesis of the patient’s prion disease.

Then in 2021, a possible link to vaccines. Turkish scientists found a 82 year old woman who developed CJD shortly after she had recently received a Sinopac jab. She died within a few months from the disease. Their conclusion was prions either caused a new disease or accelerated the patients existing undiagnosed disease. The fact the onset of CJD symptoms came quickly after vaccination requires further studies of vaccines is necessary to determine if there is causality. (See Kuvandik et al Oct 2021)

Prions are found in the spikes of SARS-Cov-2, in the spiked-proteins of Pfizer and Moderna (mRNA), Astra-Zeneca and Janssen (adenovirus), and inactivated virus vaccines such as Sinopac. The 4 novel western vaccines had copied the same prion segments of the spikes of SARS-Cov2 genome. Sinopac of course, is the actual virus, but in weakened form. It is known that prions are responsible for neurological diseases. It is also known that Covid-19 causes 17-36% of patients in the acute phase of the disease to develop neurological symptoms. What has not been established is causality of the vaccines.

And now, the smoking gun. French scientists recently studied 26 patients from different countries and established that novel vaccines of Pfizer, Moderna, Astra-Zenega and Janssen, without a doubt, either caused CJD and or accelerated the disease. It further showed the onset of symptoms within 12 days after taking the jab and death after a few months, some as instantaneous as 2-1/2 months. 20 of the 26 patients have since died. (See (Clare Moret-Chalmin et al May 2022) Prior to publication of their study, Clare Moret-Chalmin et al had presented their findings at a Neurology congress in London in March 2022. A significant contribution to knowledge, and certainly "Breaking News" worthy, yet strangely, it interested no mainstream media.

Read about the the excess deaths in Singapore. In 2021 the death rate jumped 12.16% over 2020.

I am curious as to whether the genome of original SARS Cov also had the prion segment. Google has not been helpful. Strangely, the genome of Omicron does not have this prion segment. Is this a natural evolution of the virus to be more habitable with humans. Or, as some scientists claim, just like SARS-Cov2, Omicron was engineered with the prion segment left out..

What is inexplicable is the continued use of the novel vaccines with toxic prions for Omicron, the current dominant strain, which no longer has this prion segment in its genome. Are our MOH officials and neurological surgeons on top of things or are they far behind the curve? Are they aware of these latest findings, or do they still believe in the Fauci-Gates-WHO misinformation? More importantly, what will they do about it?

These are some of the symptoms experienced by the 26 CJD patients in the French study :

1.   Aphasia -- a condition that affects communication, both written and spoken.
2.   Fatigue
3.   Myoclonus -- involuntary muscle twitch
4.   Intense headache resistant to treatment
5.  Dysarthria -- difficulty in speaking
6.  Forgetfulness
7.  Walking disorder, motor disorder
8.  Balance disorder, vertigo, dizziness
9.  Trouble concentrating
10. Bradyphernia -- mild cognitive impairment
11. Clous -- muscular spasms
12. Epileptic
13. Hypersomnia -- excessive daytime sleepiness or prolonged nightime sleep
14. Bedridden
15. Akinetic mutism -- a wakeful state of profound apathy, disinterestedness
16. Hallucination
17. Paresthesia -- a burning or prickling sensation at arms, legs, feet.
18. Logorrhea -- a tendency to be too talkative
19. Disorientation
20. Anxiety depressive
21. Irritability
22. Insomnia
23. Persistent neck pain
24. Dysmorphopsia -- visual distortion
25. Anorexia -- loss of appetite for food
26. Paranoid delirium
27. Aggressiveness
28. Amnesia
29. Dysthymia -- persistent mild depression
30. Feeling of drunkenness

If you or any of your relatives have taken the mRNA or adenovirus jabs, watch out for these signs. Pray it isn't CJD because there is no cure. It's a death sentence.

LEAKED AUDIO OF CHINA'S PLAN TO INVADE TAIWAN IS A CASE OF TOO MANY KEYBOARD GENERALS

 

An audio of a meeting on 14 May 2022 of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee was supposedly leaked and it's gone round the internet but ignored by mainstream media. It was an hour long meeting which detailed plans for mobilisation.

For defence purposes, China is divided into 5 regions - Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western and Central Region. A Taiwan invasion would be the responsibility of the Southern Region, hence Guangdong holds certain responsibilities.

The meeting discussed bewildering details and all fear-mongering on internet focus on a part, that of Jennifer Zeng's transcript that mentions "... mainly 1,358 detachments of various types with a total of 140,000 personnel, 953 ships of various types, and 1,653 units/sets of various unmanned equipment...." All and sundry are keyboard military experts who assume this refers to a mobilisation against Taiwan. Based simply on Zeng's translation, all online media believes in it's authencity, such as The Times Of India, Hindustan Times, Glenn Beck talk show, and many others.

Who is Jennifer Zeng?
She holds a masters in geochemistry from Peking University. She became a serious Falun Gong practitioner and was arrested and prosecuted 4 times during China's crackdown on the movement. Zeng fled China and now lives in Australia. The Falun Gong movement produced many Chinese dissidents and ferocious CCP critics. Zeng is one such, and she fans anti-CCP narratives via her blog "The Inconvenient Truths".

According to Jennifer Zeng, the audio was secretly recorded and passed to Lu De of Lude Media who posted it on his Youtube channel. Zeng made a transcript in English, inserted English sub-titles, posted on Youtube, and promoted it on her blog.

In a follow up youtube video, Zeng explained the meeting was in Guangzhou, but was online to other defence regions and bodies via military fibre network and satellites. The meeting was secretly recorded not at Guangzhou but at another satellite location. Hence bad background and many people talking at the same time. It took her a long time to complete the transcript due to poor quality as well as lots of CCP and military jargons used. She is convinced of the authenticity due to the details and she had proof-checked the existence of various institutions and companies mentioned in the meeting. Zeng mentioned, without showing evidence, that 4 top military officers had been executed recently in connection with the leak.

Who is Lu De?
His real name is Wang DingGang. There is no public profile on him. Lu De has a Youtube channel he calls Lude Media. His videos are hugely popular and he is well know for disclosing a lot about CCP secrets. Who is his source, no one knows.

At some point he got enticed into the murky world of Miles Kwok, a virulent anti-CCP clap trap. He ended up working with Miles as CEO of "Rule Of Law" (ROL), one of various organisations set up by Miles with the audacious objective of destroying the CCP. It was Lu De who linked Li-Meng Fan to Miles. Remember Fan, the first virologist to finger the SARS-Cov2 was lab-made and came from Wuhan Lab leak. Miles made Fan a director in ROL where she had the fundings to attack CCP bioweapons programme.

Who is Miles Kwok?
This man is known as Miles Kwok, aka Miles Guo aka Guo Wengui aka Ho Wan Kwok. Not much is known of his early years. Of his later years, one can write a book.

In 1993 he bursted onto the Chinese real estate scene in Zhengzhou and later in 2008 gained recognition for bulding the Olympic Park in Beijing. Soon, he was a well known billionaire. He cultivated local political leaders, one of whom was Ma Jian, Vice Minister of China’s Ministry of State Security. Ma himself was arrested for corruption in 2015. According to Miles, Ma put himself in harm's way because he collected indiscretions on all sorts of party officials. Ma was sentenced to life imprisonment. He had implicated Miles for giving him a few millions in bribes. Miles fled to US. When the CCP acted to confiscate his assets in China, he turned on the communist party leadership and threatened to unload secrets of party corruption, information he probably gleaned from Ma. Miles billed himself as enemy #1 of the CCP as he sought assylum in US.

To facilitate his assylum application, Miles sought closer association with the Trump admin circle. He took up membership of Mar a Lago Club and sought out ultra rightist Steve Bannon, one time Trump's White House Chief Strategist. The two bonded in their mutual hatred of the CCP and their anti-CCP propagation agenda. Miles tapped Bannon's brain for media creativity, while the other milked the Chinese tycoon's millions to fund his MAGA activities.

To his credit, Trump steered clear of Miles and did not subscribe to GETTR after getting booted from Twitter. There seemed to be talk of Trump getting some GETTR equity but nothing materialised. That was good fortune, or wisdom, for Miles is one of the parties behind GETTR and there is some corporate misfeasance going on.

Miles has since created many organisations primarily tasked to propagate anti-CCP news or misinformation (ROL for example), several commercial enterprises, media platforms, cryptocurrencies, investment deals, nurtured a growing cult of followers of anti-CCP Chinese diaspora, set up New Federal State of China, a sort of Chinese government in exile in US. He runs what has become known as a "Whistleblower Movement" against CCP. He has more than 70 law suits pending, lost a couple of cases with hundreds of millions in fines. He has claims of frauds against him, of mis-using investors' funds, mis-led his followers. He has galvanised and mobilised clueless diehard followers against anyone who came up against him, even suggesting violence. He has also taken to join the US Patriots' fight against the Liberal Left. Did I say one can write a book about his exploits!


Back to the audio file. Is it real, is it a hoax, is it intelligence psy-ops, or is it counter-intelligence psy-ops?

In today's world of mis-information, one needs to be smart to discern the truth, or at least understand that something does not seem right. A hoax or prank by some private individuals is unlikely in view of the details involved in the discussion. I have always stressed we need to appreciate context and the messenger's motivation.

For context, one needs to have a fairly good world view and knowledge of current affairs. A couple of days prior to the Guangzhou meeting, President Biden met with the Asean leaders. He will then meet up with the Quad in East Asia on the later part of May. The audio leak comes at a time of increased rhetoric by hawkish US lawmakers, Biden admin and US allies, to counter the threat against Taiwan. The leak could be intentional on the part of China to make unfriendly voices bring down the heat a few notches. The Daily Caller quoted a former senior Trump staffer, to his credit, said it was "meant to intimidate".

I went some lengths to talk of Lu De, Miles and Zeng to illustrate a need to understand the messenger before jumping to conclusions. Their motivation is clear. Were they in fact unknowingly handed the audio file on a platter to propagate a Chinese ploy. Was it similar to the way the Daily Beast and New York Times received the Steele Dossier on the Russian Collusion. Zeng believes the audio file was recorded by anti-President Xi elements within the CCP, suggesting a schism exists within the party.

Last year, a further twist happened. ROL sued its CEO Lu De for breach of fiduciary duties. See Rule of Law vs Wang Dinggang. ROL claimed damages from Wang for acts against the interest of the Whistleblower Movement, ROL and New Federal State of China. In 2021 Lu De and Li-Meng Fan parted company with ROL and Miles. The duo had grown disillusioned with Miles and several incidents brought them to the conclusion that China's enemy #1 is in fact, not a CCP critic, but a Chinese dissident hunter. They suspected Miles to be working secretly for the CCP, identifying Chinese dissidents and betraying them over to the party.

Lu De and Fan's claims could be right. The CCP has infiltrated the US institutional and political leadership for years. The establishment leadership in both Democrat and Republican parties are compromised. China has its hands up Biden's arse. There are evidentiary proofs. However, Trump and MAGA lawmakers have not been infiltrated. In retrospect, it seems quite clear that the objective of Miles is to infiltrate this conservative sphere of influence. If I were the MAGA crowd, I would be extremely fearful of Miles. What they are dealing with may be counter-intelligence psy-ops. I would keep miles away from him, no pun intended.

Relax. It's not hoax, it's not intelligence nor counter-intelligence psy-ops.

Anyone with some military background at certain levels can easily understand what the meeting was all about. One key give away is the talk about transitioning from peace to war. What the meeting was all about was the development of a Standard Operating Procedure for a graduated state of readiness for war. The US has 5 levels from Defcon 1 to Defcon 5. Defcon stands for Defence Readiness Condition. Every country has this in one form or another, so does Singapore. For example, in the meeting, you hear them speaking of using civilian assets. This is called commandeering civilian assets for military purposes. Same old same old for Singapore. This is all legislated in the Singapore Armed Forces Act. In fact, if you are an owner of some heavy equipment, mostly in transportation or construction segment, you would most probably have been involved in SAF exercises where your equipment were commandeered.

So, everybody, stand-down and relax. It's much ado about nothing. Let me end on a lighter note. Readers of my blog should know I often throw in some personal experience. And yes I do have a personal tale here. I cannot go into details to avoid any breach of secrets. During my national service days, as a newly commissioned 2nd lieutenant, I was posted to a special unit. Our unit was tasked with the responsibility of operating certain communication infrastructure we inherited from the British Armed Forces. I realised the unit had no Standard Operating Procedures, or SOP as we used to call it. An SOP for the unit is essential to establish the instructions for each state of readiness. The officers before me had done nothing. I raised the matter to Division HQ which relayed to Mindef. Nothing moved. As an idealistic young officer, I was concerned and pushed for an answer several times. In the end, I was instructed to write the SOP "since I was the one who brought it up". It was as ridiculous as it can get. Hey, I wasn't a general, how was I to understand the scheme of things at the national level? I assumed the response was actually their way of telling me to zip up. I obeyed. In retrospect, it's understandable as the army was very young and still finding its way at the time.

An invasion plan would have been more specific and limited in scale, would certainly have discussed enemy strength and weaknesses, would have identified scope of operation, command and control matters, identified friendly and unfriendly forces, described terrains, talked of matters like beachhead, command location, reserves, order of advance, and a host of other combat issues, etc. There was none of that. In effect, the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee meeting was about developing an SOP for the Southern Defence Region, which will eventually trickle down to an SOP for each individual operating unit. It's exactly the same kind of SOP that I tried to get top brass to initiate for my unit some fifty years ago.