ASEAN BUSINESSMEN

As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at Che Det on October 31, 2011

*Saya dan isteri mengucapkan Selamat Menyambut Hari Raya Aidiladha kepada semua rakyat Malaysia, khususnya kepada jemaah Haji kita di Tanah Suci, semoga mendapat Haji yang Mabrur dan selamat kembali ke tanah air. Selamat Hari Raya Aidiladha*

1. Asean businessmen wants to know about the European Union and the Eurozone and the financial crisis plaguing them.

2. For this they invited Tony Blair – the failed Prime Minister of Britain. Blair is the least educated about Europe and its management.

3. What he did as PM of the United Kingdom was to trot at the heels of President Bush. When Bush lied, he came up with an even more amazing lie. He claimed that Iraq could attack Britain with missiles etc within 45-minutes, using weapons of mass destruction which he declared Iraq had.

4. To prevent this attack Britain must, together with the United States, attack Iraq in a pre-emptive war.

5. Then after occupying Iraq and searching for weapons of mass destruction, none were discovered.

6. Unfazed Blair declared that the attack on Iraq was to remove “dictator” Saddam Hussein.

7. After he was removed as PM, the British set up a Commission to go into the misdeeds of Blair. The British regarded Blair as the worst PM of Britain. They made it clear he was a liar. His lies resulted in British soldiers being killed and wounded. (That a hundred thousand plus of innocent Iraqis were also killed is of course acceptable).

8. This liar is apparently looked upon by Asean businessmen as a sage, as a man whose words must be listened to in order to understand the problems faced by the EU.

9. The only thing they can learn from the liar Blair is how to lie. This man is guilty of war crimes, of mass murder. He should be tried and punished. And businessmen should not learn how to lie.

THE TRAGEDY OF LIBYA

As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at Che Det on October 28, 2011

1. One is always shocked when someone one knows suffers a tragic end. Maybe for the enemies of Gaddafi, he deserves what he got. But that does not lessen my sadness over the manner of his demise.

2. As Prime Minister I met Gaddafi several times. He was always hospitable. Much of my time with him was spent in answering questions explaining about Malaysia. He seemed to want to learn about developing a country. I believe he wanted to do the same for Libya.

3. In his early years he had plans for improving the lives of the Libyans. He, it was, who initiated the irrigation of the fertile coastal areas through building the great artificial river. A Korean contractor undertook the job, building a huge pipeline to carry underground water from the distant interior to huge tank storage farms and then to irrigate the land.

4. I was much impressed by this project. Obviously he cared enough for his country and people to do this. But beyond that nothing much was done. Despite huge revenues from oil exports the country remained poorly developed. The people were relatively poor for a country with huge oil reserves.

5. The Western press reported about his alleged cruelty against his detractors and enemies. But I have always been leery of the Western press. According to them I am also a great dictator who imprisoned hundreds of my political enemies. I know this is not true. And so I discounted much of the western press reports about Gaddafi.

6. But he was certainly deficient in understanding the purpose of Government. He had no real plan for developing his country and prospering his people. He did not travel much to see how the other countries were developing. But his house where my wife and I had lunch with him and his wife was no palace. It was not even luxurious.

7. Most of the time he was reclusive and after the western attempt to kill him, he feared for his life. He met visitors in a tent in a walled compound.

8. I do not know about the cruelties perpetrated by him or his people. During his retreat recently I did not read about his prisoners being liberated or mass graves of the victims of his cruelty. Maybe these will be discovered later.

9. In war cruelty is to be expected. In fact war legitimises cruelty, including killings. Still to see the cruelty, the killing inflicted on someone you know, shocks and saddens you.

10. I am saddened by the killing of Gaddafi. He should be arrested and tried for his crime. But I know that is not the way today. Osama bin Laden was also executed by the United States’ soldiers. There are contracts made by “civilised democratic” Governments on several people as there were in the past I fear the fate of Gaddafi will befall others who fail to see the writing on the wall. The powerful, with vested interest in a regime change will ensure that this will happen. They have much to gain.

11. I hope and pray that Libya will get a good Government after this, headed by leaders who truly believe in good Government, who will be prepared to lose in clean elections which will not be manipulated.

BUSINESS ASEAN

As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at Che Det on October 25, 2011

**Saya mengucapkan Selamat Menyambut Hari Deepavali kepada semua pengunjung dan pembaca blog Chedet.cc**

1. One learns from the successful. One cannot learn much from the failures except to know what not to do, and to reject their creed and methods. Certainly one should not learn how to be successful from cheats, from liars, from people who are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands through their incompetence and willingness to lie.

2. It would seem however that there are people in the Asean countries who are willing to pay good money for the dubious privilege of getting advice from a person who is a known liar, responsible for leading his country into a futile war, and has openly been rejected by his own people.

3. Congratulations.

USE OF ELECTRICITY

As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at Che Det on October 18, 2011

1. Today the consumption of electricity is increasing at a rapid rate. We are spending a lot of money on building new power plants. We need them of course. We need the light and the power which electricity provides us. We cannot do without electricity.

2. Many people are however complaining about their electricity bill. It makes a big hole in their pockets.

3. Because of this researchers have worked hard to lower the cost of electricity without sacrificing the brightness that we have come to think is indispensable.

4. Recently I was shown new lighting systems which can save more than half our electricity bill without sacrificing our partiality towards bright lights.

5. We are already familiar with the light emitting diode or LED in our cars and televisions. Now the LED can be used for household lighting, for lighting of buildings and stadiums and for street lighting.

6. LED consumes less than half the electricity needed for the same brightness from the conventional incandescent bulbs and fluorescent tubes. Unlike fluorescent tubes LED light need noballast and the light comes on instantly upon switching on.

7. Supposing all our streets and roads are lit up with these energy saving system we would be saving millions of Ringgits. Actually it has been installed in Langkawi and Karak highway. If all the streets in Malaysia are lit this way, and also all our houses and offices we can do away with some of our power plants. At the very least we need not build too many more.

8. That will be a plan for the nation. But for individual consumers the bill would be much smaller, maybe as low as half the present bill.

9. Besides lighting, there are now air-conditioners and refrigerators which consume less power. These too can reduce electricity bills for householders and restaurants.

10. However the cost of changing to this new system would be higher than the cost of the old system. This makes people reluctant to switch to the new system. On the other hand the savings from the reduced consumption of electricity would, in maybe three years time, cover the extra cost. Since the system can last much longer than three years the user would enjoy quite a lot of savings.

11. The power company may not feel happy at receiving less money for the sale of electricity.

12. For a time the installed capacity would not be fully utilised. But consumption would still grow and eventually the capacity would be fully utilised.

13. What this means is that the power company need not invest in new plants. This would constitute a savings for the power company.

14. The real gainers would be the suppliers of the new energy efficient system and the big users. The nation too would gain.

QE II

As posted by Dr. Mahathir Mohamad at Che Det on October 07, 2011

1. No. QE II is not short for Queen Elizabeth II. Nor is it about the great cruise ship QE II.

2. It is about Quantitative Easing II, i.e. quantitative easing for the second time.

3. What is quantitative easing? It is about printing and issuing money to overcome a financial problem. Lately Britain has printed 75 billion pounds to help distressed banks and others.

4. It is very innovative. And very easy. When you lose money just print the replacement. If Malaysia had done a Q.E. during the Asian Currency Crisis, what would the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the financial and monetary experts say?

5. We would be condemned. We would be told that the Malaysian economy would collapse. They would make dark predictions about black markets in dollars as the Ringgit would be useless. It would be rejected. It is not money!! etc. etc.

6. But the United States of America did a Quantitative Easing with the printing and issuing of three trillion dollars to help distressed banks and insurance companies. Now Britain is following in the footsteps of elder brother.

7. How nice it would be if our pocket is picked, we are allowed to print some money to replace what is lost. But of course we cannot. Even our country cannot, although our central bank, unlike the Federal Reserve Bank of America, is Government owned.

8. We were told that the best way to handle a financial crisis was to let our banks and businesses go bankrupt. How that would help I do not know. What I could see were people being thrown out of jobs and any number of social problems. But that was the “conventional wisdom”. Why are the great institutions not advising Western Governments to let businesses go bankrupt?

9. Ah! But they did. Lehman Brothers was allowed to go bankrupt. Did it solve the financial crisis? No. As far as I can tell the crisis simply got worse and refused to go away.

10. They resorted to all the things they told us not to do when our financial situation was in a tailspin as the currency traders devalued the Ringgit. They bailed out failed companies and banks with huge sums of money, they stop short selling, they talk of controlling the currency traders, etc. etc.

11. We recovered by doing the forbidden. But they have not recovered. My feeling as an economic and financial ignoramus is that they are not going to recover any time soon. They will not recover because they are still in a state of denial. They still believe they are rich, as rich as before they plunged into the crisis. And believing that they can somehow continue to remain rich, they are unable to behave like poor people.

12. So they have not stopped spending. They are ever prepared to go to war, to produce costly weapons, to do research on more killing machines, to maintain military bases all over the world, operate huge fleets of war ships and military aircraft, updating them etc. etc. They must keep up the big power wealthy country image even if their people have no jobs, riot and protest.

13. The great financial crisis will be with us for a long time. Even when it is resolved the aftermath will see slow recovery for the giants of the west. They will find difficulties in returning to doing real business of producing goods, providing services and trading.