Saturday, November 26, 2022

MAS-NUGAN HAND LICENCE, FTX, ELON MUSK-TWITTER ALL TRUMAN SHOWS?


A caveat : The events you are about to read are true. The evaluations are purely my imagination extended from my humble worldly knowledge.

The Truman Show was a movie about a world of simulated reality. The protagonist Truman Burbank was played by Jim Carey. Truman was raised and lived in a huge movie set that was his entire world. He never knew he was living in a created world and his daily life was streamed as a reality show. Everything around him was false.

Of course, not everything in our world is false. But internet has unmasked much concealment and we have glimpses of reality every now and then. Often when we let imagination run wild with our skepticalg minds, we enter the realm of conspiracy theories and see shadows lurking. Then again, many conspiracy theories are actually truths running ahead of breaking news.

Back in 1978 when I was working in a bank, I had lunch with a friend one day. I shall conceal any trace to ID this friend. Just suffice to say I found him a very mysterious and mystical character given to access to some information that few have. He seems to have a knack for any subject matter that creeps up in idle conversation and acquainted either directly or indirectly with personalities referenced. I had long suspected him to be working for some Intelligence organisation. On his part, he enjoys my company because he said, unlike most ordinary folks, I could engage him in all sorts of unusual subject matter, a compliment I attribute to my scattered interests and I was widely read at the time, devouring magazines like Newsweek, The Economist, Time Magazine, Financial Times etc. 

Over lunch that day, I brought up the matter of Nugan Hand Bank opening a branch in Singapore. He asked what I thought of the matter. I felt it strange that MAS should approve the licence for a bank that had hardly any history (it was incorporated in Australia in 1973), without any reciprocity which has been MAS policy, and owned by a couple of guys no one in the industry knew. He told me he knew one of the co-founders, Michael Hand, back in Vietnam War days. According to him, Hand was a decorated Green Beret, but was already dabbling in drugs during the war. Nugan Hand was set up as CIA banker, sourcing funds from drug operations. Today one can google and dive deep into the CIA-drugs-gun running-money laundering operations of Nugan Hand. But back in 1978 we had no access to any info. Of course I took my friend's claims with a pinch of salt. Then to my amazement, in 1980 Frank Nugan, the partner of Hand, was found dead in a car in Australia, execution style. The bank collapsed in 1980 under a cloud of massive fraud and criminal activities including drug trafficking. Hand disappeared, lots of international investigation and inquiries, but no one went to jail. Except one - the accountant Mr. Tan who ended up in Singapore jail on account of the fact he was the Local Principal of the branch. Innocent chap, the sacrificial goat to close the chapter in Singapore..

What is known today is Nugan Hand Bank was set up by US Deep State, principally CIA, to source illegal funds to pursue covert operations in SE Asia, never funded by, and thus concealed from, Congress.

What was MAS granting the banking licence all about. I mean Nugan Hand had a branch in Chiangmai in the Golden Triangle, in an office shared with the Drug Enforcement Office, company employees were basically CIA Alumni, including William Colby the future agency head, the predecessor of George Bush Snr. Surely these things don't get past the suits in MAS. Was Singapore doing the bidding of the US? Those were the years when Singapore felt the need for a strong defence umbrella of the US. More intriguing is the question begets a more important question -- what was the trade-off? Did some benefits accrue or some threats extinguished?


So what's with FTX? Similarly, the crypto exchange which has collapsed under a cloud of financial dust, is now unraveling much dark secrets. US Deep State has long learnt to master a funding source so that they can run covert activities without the need to go to Congress for funding and support their programmes. After Nugan Hand, came the Iran-Contra scandal. Ran by Oliver North, the US intelligence brought in drugs to fund the various covert anti-communists programmes in Latin Americas. Plan loads of drugs were brought in, landing on a small outlying airstrip in Kansas City, under the very nose of Governor Clinton. There was once a small incident of a group of kids who witnessed the illicit cargo shipment, and they were suicided off.

Times have changed. Perhaps drugs are now replaced by cryptos. Remember the Freudian slip of Joe Biden about them having the best plan to defraud at the polls? Is FTX the play? FTX was founded in May 2019 round about the time of Biden's comment. With its collapse, many details are coming to light. FTX is surrounded by all sorts of Democrat Party members or their operatives. In turn Sam Bankman-Fried donated generously to Democrats and some Trump-hating RINOs. SBF half joked about the possibility of a US$1b donation to Democrats for 2024. Round-tripping of cryptos between FTX and Ukraine seem to suggest some sliver of credibility to the claim of the massive US aid being round-tripped back to Democrat coffers to fund the mid-term campaigns. That would certainly explain the generosity of the Biden admin to pour in massive aid to Ukraine, with money they don't actually have. Using cryptos and bypassing central banking systems seem a perfect mechanism for these shenanigans. With it's fall, Congress opens an inquiry into FTX, headed by a Congresswoman Maxine Watters who received generous donations from SBF. You know next scene is a cover-up, but not if the new GOP Congress can help it. Sorry for a cliffhanger here.

The question comes back again to the smart suits in Temasek. Were they really so blind and reckless to throw US275m at a crazy outfit? Social media is chokeful of condemnation of Temsek due diligence quality. I for one refuse to believe that it was a case of bad quality control. If not, then it is ditto the same questions asked of the Nugan Hand case. But what could possibly be the pull factor for Singapore to align to a Democrat leadership? Globalism. Singapore is a big fan of trade globalisation. Democrats are all about WEF One World Order globalism under technocratic elites.


As for Twitter, is Elon Musk the white knight charging into the arena to protect Free Speech? Or is there something else? The business risk he is taking makes no sense. He already knew Twitter is in a financial mess. He knew Twitter lied about subscription base data, the false declaration of which to SEC is very serious, to the possibility of getting the company struck dead for breach of legislation. He knew bots bolstered Twitter numbers and sooner or later will face massive reparation demands by advertisers. Twitter share prices are already twittering. His takeover will see revolts by woke employees and advertisers. There will be massive layoffs of crazy liberal woke employees to the extent of crippling operations. Advertisers will flee. In short, Musk's actions face a risk of Twitter imploding. Does he have some macro business plan that incorporates Twitter into some eco-system he is building? He has never hinted anything.

My assessment is Musk is already a government's man. By the way, Trump does not trust him and I wonder why. To understand the role of Musk with the government, one has to dig hard into NASA activities. Obama killed NASA's space discovery Project Consternation, ostensibly because the US$3b bill he could not stomach. But space was identified by Trump admin as the new frontier of military challenges.
"Space is the world's newest war-fighting domain.  Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. And we're leading, but we're not leading by enough. But very shortly we'll be leading by a lot." .... Donald Trump
Trump created Space Force, the US 6th military arm, and put substantial personnel and budget behind it. Democrat detractors laughed at him. Joe Biden undid every project that has a Trump signature on it, but left Space Force alone. That should tell us about how seriously the US takes the space challenge.

So why did Obama kill NASA? I believe it was a planned move to protect the secrecy of a lot of projects. We can go into the realms of conspiracy theories again. Of extra-terrestrial engagements, re-engineering of ET weapons systems, etc. ET is no longer a fiction of imagination. The Air-Force has made some acknowledgements of their existence. (I absolutely believe in this from personal experience of sighting an ET event about 15 years ago.) And possibly covert military space technology that's against their laws. NASA has taken to outsource their research and development, exploratory projects, and rocketry technologies for satellite management. The reason primarily being to avoid Freedom Of Information interference. FOI does not apply to commercial enterprises. In this way, top secrets are better protected.

I'm guessing you already know where this is leading to. Yes, Musk's rocketry technology company Space-X.  Musk is for all intents and purposes, the government's partner in space exploration. This calls into question why would Musk take a collision course with the Biden admin to champion Free Speech by taking over Twitter. Perhaps Musk is confident that his stranglehold over NASA is so strong the government will not move against him even when he goes anti-woke. But simple logic says no one is foolish enough to poison the pool from which he draws his water. Musk is an anomaly and this is where my big data app breaks down. It cannot process. For the time being I like what Musk is doing at Twitter. Time will tell.

Over at Temasek, US$51m was poured into an Indian rocketry venture in September. Skyroot Aerospace last week sent their first test flight Vikram-S up into the atmosphere. It was in the air for 5 minutes reaching a height of 81.5km before splashng down into the Bay of Bengal. It has not yet reached space which is 100km out. Straits Times called Skyroot the most funded aerospace company in India and US$51 million got Temasek a 25% stake. Most Singaporeans probably look at it as high risk investments with questionable very long term returns plus terrible currency loss potentials.

But what do Earthlings know. Not all Temasek investments are profit seeking. Temasek does national service sometimes and invest in ventures that are not commercially driven but for some state economic agenda. This entry into rocket technology with a country that is politically neutral with Singapore is possibly with a view to establish security and better control of our assets in space. As Trump puts it, there are grave threats out in space. Consider this. In the ongoing war, Ukraine would have been completely without communications if Musk had not stepped in and offered his satellite services. There are thousands of satellites up in space, with all sorts of technological capabilities, both military and commercial. If a country puts a satellite up there, it better have direct control over it. Singapore has 19 at last count.


Get your pop corns. Sit back and watch more Truman shows Cut your imagination loose.

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3 comments:

shiu hong said...

I'm intrigued by your insights. In fact I often wonder if some of our policies are there to 'benefit outsiders more than our people' so as to increase the stake outsiders have in our country. Of course our government will not forget to enrich its coffers in the process.

Pat Low said...

Thank you for visiting, Shiu Hong

Most country decisions, especially when it involves a foreign country, are made with trade-offs. In the case of Nugan Hand, it's inconceivable the govt has not intel about the drug activities and their association with CIA. So the question is what did the govt get in return, or was it just to get on the good books of Uncle Same as at the time, our leaders felt beholden to the US for the umbrella of security they extend to the region.

Yes, I do agree some of govt activities do not seem to have a Singapore First approach. This leads me to my new blog Is Klaus Schwab The Head Of The Singapore Govt?

Anonymous said...

Human is funny. Chasing after power and especially money that they create which is meaningless. Perhaps we just intelligence enough to ask why are we create and what are our purposes but don't know the answer to it..