cheers,
______________
Amikaks
where to soma
http://board.muse.mu/member.php?u=127215

Thanks,
Harbans Lal Gera

Maybe it is time for the US to go ahead outsource its PSAs and government services since we’ve outsourced just about everything else. Introducing our third party presidential candidate, Rajiv from Bangalore.

If we were dealing with a person who was sensitive to the appropriate tone and the social realities, we might deign a glance of appraisal – might advise on the less than perfectly harmonious interplay of colors, the faulty juxtapositions of narrative mood. After all, one of the obligations placed upon our selves is the cultural improvement of our lessers. But one is disinclined to cast pearls before upstarts. No, indeed, we withdraw.

There are places where the elevated patronage of vaulted habitues of Instapundit is sufficiently recognized and observed. At such a place you may attend me.

Actually, I think a better translation would be “Speak Mandarin more, speak in dialects less”

I understand it is difficult grasp such subtleties coming from a sophisticated doctrinaire libertarian perspective… but you might want to be just a little sympathetic towards the policy wonks in this country. You mock the misconceived notion of population control, but in a country as crowded as this, it is an easy mistake to make. What is more important is that the state bit the bullet and reversed course when the demographic data began to trend in an unfavourable direction.

And of course, a lingua franca was needed for uniting a fractious Chinese community divided into its various dialect groups. It pays diplomatic and economic dividends in the long term too: a common language and shared linguistic heritage with the commies can be helpful.

That was and remains a casus belli – this has been made clear to the Malaysians in no uncertain terms.

It also highlights how vulnerable we were then (water security has improved somewhat in the intervening years). Again, “annihilation in a few days” is anything but hyperbole.

As to how quickly ethnic tensions can turn into a conflagration, although ethnic fautlines are not always so readily apparent on the surface, one need only look at the 1997 pogroms against the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. Let’s just say it refocused minds very keenly on the fragility of peace.

But many Hakka I know (and am related to) would easily grab a buck/yuan/renmimbi for whatever it took. (Deng Xiopeng excepted, of course).

Singapore is turning Marina Bay into a reservoir – Google “Marina Barrage”. Water security would seem to be on their minds as much as military security.

Kerry, you write:

The second is notable simply for the bizarre juxtaposition of jolly Singaporean businessmen and near-apocalyptic text.

Singapore’s enemies are real, it’s strategic depth non-existent and the trauma of conquest and occupation has not entirely healed.

What you see as bizarre, I see as poignant and sobering.

Think Singapore, but with 1.x billion. Not necessarily scary (presuming the transition from corrupt CINOism to a somewhat professionally-run and relatively less-corrupt quasifascist republic) but definitely not something you’d feel all that great about.

This assumes, of course, that the rising RMB doesn’t push outsourcing of jobs to the poorer nations of SEAsia and Bangladesh/Pakistan, which then put rootless Chinese out of work and in the mind to start smashing things…

But then, IANAPoliticalScientist..

Seriously, Malaya and SIngapore merged to become MalaySIa, but racial tensions got the Malayan king (or emperor or potentate or whatever) to break Singapore back off. It almost killed Lee Kwan (Harry) Yew’s political career.

But it didn’t.

(thank goodness for Discovery HD