Posted in Books & printed materials, Politics & government on March 24th, 2012 1 Comment »
I suppose there are times when there is a piece of news that the mainstream media rather not report, but it has to because it is still a news organization and the readers do want to know. If the news organization wants to keep its readers loyal, the readers have to be served lest they [...]
Posted in Economics, Poetry, Politics & government on March 4th, 2012 1 Comment »
High-income economy, sans the illusion of money, some for you and me, some more for the party’s crony.
Posted in Conflict & disaster, Economics, Liberty on July 26th, 2011 1 Comment »
The rapid and successful economic development of China so far has been presented as the superiority of central planning over the approach taken, for example, by India. It is the Beijing development model as some would say. Authoritarian top-down approach gets things done, unlike the messy democratic means from the bottom up. All those criticisms [...]
Posted in Economics on June 30th, 2011 1 Comment »
It is the practice of some labor unions to produce one or several publications annually to inform their members of various activities and developments related to the unions. As with many things in this world, it costs money to produce these publications. These unions finance the publications through a number of ways. Membership fee is [...]
Posted in Economics, Politics & government, Society on December 11th, 2010 2 Comments »
While I am at the issue of bribery, I would like to touch on the recently released Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer 2010 report that the chart from the Daily Chart blog is based on. After reading it, or rather, skimming through it, I suspect some of the results underestimate what are actually happening on [...]
Posted in Economics, Politics & government, Society on December 10th, 2010 3 Comments »
Bribery is wrong. That is a given. Yet surprisingly, I am struggling to explain why it is wrong. The best I can come up with without referring to other sources is that bribery undermines a system of rules and it gives those involved in the transaction unfair advantage against those who adhere to the rules. [...]
Posted in Politics & government, Sports on September 26th, 2010 1 Comment »
A friend shared his thought about the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, which poises to be a disaster, the other day. The Economist with its typical humor wrote: INDIAN officials insist that the Commonwealth games, to which Delhi plays host in October, should not be compared to Beijing’s Olympic games. They are right. The 2008 [...]
Posted in Personal, Politics & government, Society on March 3rd, 2010 2 Comments »
A dear friend was in Sydney recently. For old times’ sake, he called me up and asked if I was free for the day. I said yes. How could I say no? Both of us are Malaysians and both of us attended Michigan. We had some good times together. We had not met for a [...]
Posted in Politics & government on October 2nd, 2009 No Comments »
Much has been said about the candidacy of Isa Abdul Samad for the Bagan Pinang by-election in Negeri Sembilan. I wonder how much marginal originality I can write after all that. Yet, I am writing about it. This piece is not so much to attack Isa Abdul Samad. Others have done so and I will [...]
Posted in Politics & government on August 20th, 2009 No Comments »
Nampaknya, kompas moral parti UMNO berada di dalam keadaan yang sangat, sangat tenat. Dahulu, terlampau mudah untuk menunjukkan betapa UMNO mengamalkan budaya yang korup. Duit rakyat tidak dibezakan daripada harta parti dan kuasa kerajaan dipergunakan untuk kepentingan parti, malah, kepentingan peribadi ahli-ahli UMNO. Bukannya mereka ini berasa malu tetapi dengan megahnya menyatakan yang itu adalah [...]
The name is Hafiz Noor Shams.
For more about me, please go here.