gambling and the gaming industry

I had never known that gambling and gaming was such a favourite item with Chinese community in Malaysia. In my adult years I read a number of times written protests in mainstream media whenever there were bids to put a stop to or authorities’ clamping down on gambling and gaming outlets.

I took a bus on a journey to my hometown. It was a 4-hour journey from Tanjung Malim to Butterworth. I accidentally discovered a tour group that operated express buses from various places in Malaysia and Singapore to gambling and gaming site atop Genting Highlands. As my residence was in the suburb or more accurately outskirt of town, going back to the city to hop on a bus would be a waste of valuable time. I discovered that I could start a journey from various points without having to go to the main bus terminals. It was my greatest discovery in many years.

The fare was very reasonable and the comfort was a real luxury. Suddenly I had alternative transportation without much hassle. Then it dawned on me the shear size of the industry that was able to support such a massive network of logistics.

On the journey back, I noticed two gentlemen sitting beside me were playing cards for a solid four hours. They were practising on the bus en-route the gambling arena. They were very passionate at playing cards. Playing with lady luck was perhaps in the Chinese people’s DNA.

One could get addicted to gambling. It was for this reason that gambling was seen as dangerous and prohibited by many religions. Many argued that one should know when to call it quit when one gambled. But in many cases there was no stopping. Still this favourite pastime of the Chinese people in general, was allowed to flourish in the name of freedom of speech and expressions in a democratic country. Just watch it mate! Do not go overboard!

troubadour

same old story, same old song and it always works

Here we go again! Break the enemy from within. Strategy used by the intelligence unit of UMNO (read Special Branch (SB) of the Royal Malaysian Police) is simple. Infiltrate the organisation and split it from within. In the case of Malaysian political scene, all organisations are being infiltrated at the same time. 7,000 full time personnel of the SB Unit are working 24/7 to initiate micro-cracks to stimulate divide and eventual collapse of targeted strategic organisations.

Four key UMNO-extension units are the major operatives. These are SB, MI, INTAN and ACA. They are working hand-in-gloves to perfection.

PAS, PKR and HINDRAF have been deeply infiltrated. PAS is struggling to fend off the silent movement of what one blogger (Tulang Besi) termed as the “UMNO-Fraction” within its party. The main aim is to divide with a lure of positions (later translated into dollars and cents) by bringing PAS into the BN coalition. It seems to be working VERY WELL. A very low key and quiet and subversive nature of the operation bears signature of the SB Unit.

PKR is being assaulted by the Anti Corruption Agency, ACA. The action has borne fruit with the sacking of an EXCO of the Perak State. More is in the pipeline.

HINDRAF is perhaps the easiest of all to infiltrate. It was infiltrated on the eve of its inception. Thanks to emotional nature of the founders and members. It is now singing MIC tune.

DAP is perhaps the most difficult to penetrate but they will jump with a slight nudge on the waist. The party has two time bombs, the 2KS; Kit Siang (KS) and Karpal Singh (KS). Both are capable of Killing Spree (KS).

Sun Tzu says, “War is Deception”. Knowledge and information is gathered using intelligence. Only wise ruler and brilliant leaders who are able to conduct intelligence with superiority and cleverness, is certain to achieve great results. Intelligence is the most important work, because the entire force relies on it for every move. It is the essence of strategy.

How about a counter strategy? Well, here’s some words from the great master.
The enemy's spies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. Thus they will become double agents and available for our service. It is through the information brought by the double agent that we are able to acquire and employ local and inward spies. It is owing to his information, again, that we can cause the doomed spy to carry false tidings to the enemy.

The SB has gone cyber. These are a group of highly intelligent personnel with deep sense of conviction but without conscience. The end justifies the means. Bloogers have been subdued and kept disarray with arrests and threat of arrests. Cyber counter intelligence sites and blogs are springing up. Have a good merry-go-round! Only the strong and intelligent will survive and also with high moral obligation and a holy conscience.

troubadour
On the eve of Eid Mubarak, the last day of Ramadan, two blessed months of the Muslim calendar.

panacea

Let’s face the truth. The only two issues that UMNO/BN has or trying to invoke are these Racial (Harmony) Card and Malay Unity Card. The Malay Unity Card is somehow evolving into Insulting Islam Card, since a general perception (and enshrined in the constitution) that a Malay is a Muslim or of the Islamic Faith. Somebody raised this point earlier in one cyberspace. I could not remember who. RPK had been instrumental in highlighting this point. He wanted us to differentiate the tree from the forest. Being able to distinguish the real and ulterior motives from the smokescreens will enable us to respond correctly to the situation the UMNO/BN machineries hope to achieve. Recognise clues from the red herrings.

Theresa Kok’s Azan Issue
Ahmad Ismail ranting on Chinese as immigrants
The Temple Demolition Issue
Molotov cocktail attack on Theresa Kok’s house
Molotov cocktail attack on Theresa Kok’s parents’ house
The Gerakan and MCA bashings
The (stupid) Utusan man’s call for Theresa Kok Lie Detector Test

Let us sieve through the mess and see the actual issues behind these veils. Do not bite the baits paraded by the SB aka agent provocateur.

Do not buy their argument. We are far too sophisticated and intelligent to be duped into running amok ala May 13th “incident”. I remember a line from David Soul’s song that goes “This time I’m going in with my eyes open, won’t make the same mistake again”.

It has been said also in many cyberspaces that these racial, religious and unity cards always work for them in the past. They have become a panacea of sort to UMNO/BN. Just raise the cards, cry foul and round up a few unfortunate bystanders, slap them with sedition charge and detain them under ISA. Abracadabra! The whole nation tows the line. Fear struck and life goes back to “normal” as usual.

We have all been conditioned and programmed to behave like cowards. Maybe we deserve what befall us.

carrying the torch

A new leader has to be found. No war has been won without a leader. Somebody please come forward. Will it be Zorro-Unmasked, Haris Ibrahim, Din Merican the DJ Blogger or Kicdefelle? There is a long list of cyber warriors out there. It is not necessary that the candidate is of Welsh and Malay (precisely Bugis) parentage but someone has to be the new torchbearer!

Let us see the common traits that cyber warriors out there must have in comparison with our Welsh-Bugis Cyber Jedi.

Strong sense of purpose
Focus
Full of energy
No-holds-barred
Plenty of grey matter
Candid
Mortal soul
Fearless
Enemy of state (read the “UMNO”)

All the positive personas came to my mind. The candidate must be a clone of YM RPK I believe.

There is this sense of anarchy in the air. Will RPK2 rise to the occasion!

rumour has it....

Tulang Besi is in Mecca. I missed rumours that his mills churn out. Here are some that may sooth those out there in a similar way that we need air to breathe.

Rumour has it that the seemingly docile DPM was so submissive to the PM because of the file on himself that the PM showed him when he was silent on Muhyiddin’s outburst and his call for quick power transition. It was reported in the rumour mill that RPK’s insertion in his statutory declaration was spot on.

The second onslaught at the Supreme Council (SC) meeting by the famous five members was a near fatal blow to the PM. It came as a shock to the PM. He was of the opinion that the DPM would have done his bid to get the members to tow the line. Little did he realise that the man was born a full-blown politician. He subsequently went to the drawing board again with the other two of the holy trinity. The son and the holy-ghost were equally stunt and checkmated.

Attacks on the PM coming from many flanks were god-sent to the DPM. Suddenly these guerrilla assaults gave him the breather and renewed “borrowed” strength. He could safely hide under SC members’ revolt. He could now fan dissent without being called in front of the (holy trinity) class to be reprimanded and shown his report card, again. Common interest kept in-check both silent and open insurgencies. He could muster a smile or two with the new knife tightly concealed behind his back.

The PM faced his Waterloo. He had neither strength nor slyness of his predecessor. He had had enough. He wanted out. He wanted to keep whatever little dignity he has and still be remembered for that. The son and the holy-ghost were left in a lurch.

New counter-offers and strategies were laid down. Handover of power would be done earlier but not that early. Son-in-law (SIL) and son-outlawed (SOL) started to prepare their safe passages out of the country. One up-above and the other down-under. One would be reading new real-politics in Oxford with a tutorship and a doctorate in mind to stage a future comeback and the other is carving a career as the outback entrepreneur. Their coffers are abounds but they would not mind a bit more but they were hard to come by with 25 million pairs of eyes on them.

The DPM cut a deal with Muhyiddin, the brightest of three stooges (the other two could not even count to ten without losing focus or interest). The ageing crown prince was their wildcard. His intense and honourable desire to see a strong UMNO re-emerging from the mess was his weakness. He would butt in willingly and keep the momentum going. He was the unsuspecting key player.

The DPM also did not want Muhyiddin. His choice was Zaid Hamidi. He was following his mentor’s approach. An idiot whose loyalty was as blind as a bat. The man was not ambitious like Muhyiddin. Muhyiddin would pose great threat the moment he became the second man and oust the DPM through court of public perception.

With safe passages ready, SIL and SOL were going for the last push. They were prolonging the old man’s reign but knew they had to cut their losses. It was a balance between full-to-the-brim coffer, safe passages and a little dignity. This was their worst case scenario. Best case scenario would be having all the plugs on DPM pulled out the moment they touched dry land up above and down under. They would mount the challenge from afar. They were relatively younger, full of vigour and were themselves seasoned political players by now.

The rest of the unscrupulous lots that make up the top 40 thieves started to align to their perceived saviours. Mother ship would sink and lifeboats were all equally filled with gaping holes.

With Gerakan having made their stand slightly transparent, Muhyiddin was considering his third option seriously. He could easily mend fences with DSAI. He could be the ones that carry the aces. He was rumoured to be negotiating for a fixed power transition (from Anwar to him having been caught in, and learnt a lot from, this imbroglio!). To hell with the UMNO lot! He had enough.

SIL and SOL were also considering the third option with DSAI! Initial contact done and details were being drawn out. The new ship might come with excess baggage after all. Who says life was fair!

Troubadour

police state and the state of the police

I refer to Malaysiakini letters to the editor, titled “police a reflection of dirty politics” and could not agree more with the author. I wish to highlight some points here on the police force in Malaysia.

There is an ulterior motive in government’s frugality in raising the salary of the police officers. It is a conscious decision on the part of the government to keep them on the brink of poverty, for most of them that is. It is similar to a strategy of keeping the majority of the population at a despicably low poverty level where a mere RM50 can buy the government five years’ of power to loot the nation of its wealth. The force is likewise compelled to resort to tax the public by way of the Sheriff of Nottingham’s. The problem is endemic. Eventually the whole force is plague with this disease and everyone becomes partners in crime.

As far as level of education of police officers is concerned, there is a conspiracy to keep the bulk of the force just above idiotic level. This coupled with the nature of “following orders of superiors” requisite ensures that the lid is tightly sealed. The very few at upper echelon with some grey matters but lack conscience lead the ignorant lot. We end up with a force from the dark side.

The Special Branch of the force is the propaganda machine. Government of the day wages war against the opposition. There are many generals within this massive unit whose main role is to win the war with the opposition. They make Sun Tzu look like a novice, forgetting that the absence of Moral Law will cause the people to be NOT “in complete accord with their ruler, that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger”.
Blatant lies and deceptions are contrived and majority of the force swallows official version of events without questions. People at large buy the government’s version of events, having been duped by controlled media.

We became a police state long time ago. Majority of the population does not even realise this. They do not even comprehend what it means, being a police state. Thus the state of the police is the reason for our nation to turn into a police state.

However the propaganda and a single version of interpretation of events no longer work when information age ensues, hence the current awakening! The advent of internet satisfies people’s hunger for an alternative point of view, having been bombarded with only single-sided story for most of their lives. The time has come for us to change the state of the police to discard the police state. Let us be nothing but a civil society.

it's a long road

September 2008 is definitely the longest month, or at least the last half of the month. Most likely October would also be the same. For the followers of REFORMASI movement, it is a long ten years’ wait that ends September 20th, 2008.

Will it take another ten years? Countdown into the second decade started September 20th, 2008. Time seems to move so slowly, especially when one is holding one’s breaths. This is the mother of all cliff-hangers for reformists in Malaysia.

Here in Thailand, in “the land of smiles”, politics are equally intriguing. It is amazing how people always underestimate the power of money. In democracy, money still rule. One always has this notion that democracy is about people’s power. Those who were in power then amassed immense wealth and are now wielding it to buy them back into power. Be that as it may, one still has to resort to democracy, to give ourselves some rays of hope. There is a little light though, coming through the cracks.

What about Malaysia? Half a century of grip is not a grip. It is a deep-rooted and cemented foundation, supported by the might of all the key government machineries. The 7,000+ Special Branch officers of the Royal Malaysian Police of a total of 58,000+ head count who do nothing but devoting 200% of their time towards ensuring that UMNO reign supreme. This number is a modest estimate. The job that they do is not an exaggeration though. This organisation is at the apex of the whole structure that is propping UMNO up. How does one take a swipe at this evil creature? Not a lot! It will take perhaps another decade. Very depressing indeed!

Then what about the opposition leader’s initiative to topple the government via defection of the ruling party’s MP? Anwar Ibrahim himself admitted when interviewed by The Daily Telegraph that “We have the numbers but we can’t move”. The Malaysian Insider also reported that the PAS Secretary General, Kamaruddin Jaafar said that he expects the stalemate to continue for years to come until a general election is held.

Brace ourselves for a long haul then!

Here’s Dan Hill’s First Blood, in true troubadour form!

It’s A Long Road (Dan Hill)

It's a long road

when you're on your own

And it hurts where they tear you dreams apart

When they draw first blood

That's just the start of it

Day and night you got to fight to keep alive

It's a real war

Right outside your front door, I tell ya

Out where they'd kill ya

You could use a friend

It's a long road

And it's hard as hell

Tell me what do you do to survive

And every new town just seems to bring you down

Trying to find your peace of mind can break your hard

It's a real war, right outside your frond door...

the ringgit peg

It is troubling indeed to read the situation in Malaysia. The decision to relook at pegging the Ringgit because of its continued slide is a desperate measure indeed. What the government should do is to boost the economy and not resorting to this pegging measure.

The last peg by the then PM of Malaysia, the infamous Mahathir Mohamad managed to insulate the Ringgit against speculative attack and devaluation. The decision then was also made as a result of government clamp down on Anwar Ibrahim's Reformasi Movement. This time is also something to do with Anwar Ibrahim.

It was ten years of hell for small business people like me. Just when we were about to recover, poof... the government threw the spanner in the works again.

It is very funny that the current DPM Najib Razak is being promoted as "British-Trained Economist". He is more like a drop-out from Nottingham University. I was lucky to have landed in Derby instead of Nottingham or else I would have ended up as another myopic economist.

troubadour

reformasi days - thriving on sabri zain's postings

The name Sabri Zain cropped out now after almost a decade of absence. The name brings back fond memory. I thrived on his postings. (Of course RPK's articles also, appearing in Harakah then, but to day is about Sabri Zain).

I was just about to make it as a businessman. Then Mahathir committed the worst of traversty. I had to leave my partnership to my partner to run as I could not earn an income in my own company. I opted for a teaching job to support a wife and four growing sons. I found solace in a Reformasi Movement, albeit underground.

Sabri Zain's "eyewitness accounts" gave me the strength to hang on. It was a long ten years of "hanging-ons".

Reading RPK's Malaysia Today, Din Merican, Haris Ibrahim, Anil Netto, Susan Loone and a host of other "cyber warriors" now gives me the goosebumps.

And now they are rounding up bloggers and "cyber warriors" undur Sedition Act and the Internal Security Act (ISA).

Here I am Sabri Zain and other cyber warriors, in your footsteps, taking "arms" for another decade of struggle? I can't just be another bystander craving for comfort of words from all of you.

troubadour

serene in pattaya

It has been raining cats and dogs for the past few days. In the words of Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits... "Rains come down, washes this dirty town...". It is so serene this Sunday morning.

Back home in Malaysia things are not that serene. Storms are brewing. The ancient and archaic UMNO is splitting despite attempts from many quarters to forge unity. When objectives differ, each group approaches in differing ways causing further divide.

It is heartwarming to see this jurassic party approaching its demise, so much so that I want to linger in this state of mind.

Just can't wait for the day we bury UMNO six feet deep complete with a pair of beautifully carved tombstones with these words: " Here Lies at Last a Tyrant that Taunt the People for Half a Century"

troubadour

and the times there were a changing, never change...

It has been 10 long years from the days of the awakening. This is the year 2008 when everything begins to turn right. Patience they say, is the art of hoping. Pray for the good and hope for the best.

For ordinary citizen like me, our life is being screwed up by corrupt politicians and their cronies. Maybe it is time to shout out instead of suffering in silence.

In the words of a troubadour;

we traded our protest songs
and our our yamaha guitar
for upward mobility
and fast moving cars
blaming on the changing world
said, can't be left behind
whatever happen to the class of '78

Well here we are; bringing out again, our protest songs.

troubadour

The Dawn of a New Era Begins on 913

The day RPK was arrested under ISA marks the beginning of a new era. As 916 is 3 days' away we see the BN/UMNO government cracks down on dissent. Malaysian Bloggers throughout this god forsaken land join voices in condemning the arrest and more arrests to come.

The PR team is in deep in conference to plan the impending takeover of Malaysia from the hands of the corrupt BN/UMNO.

There was a report of 6 mirror sites of Malaysiakini that were shut down signifying "war against bloggers". Already one blogger called this fateful incident "war time". Indeed they cast the first stone. We are but mere mortals that rise to their challenge.

Sun Tzu stressed on pivotal role of information gathering and dissemination. Arm yourselves dear comrades. Let us fight.