The fault dear Brutus ..

An interesting article appeared in the MM on how much money Anwar Ibrahim incurred to maintain an office in Washington D.C. First of all, how much money has Anwar got and from where did he get the money. I presume he accumulated it during the time when he was the Finance Minister of Malaysia.

The Ministry provided opportunities for the Minister to make a lot of money on the side; that's how Daim Zainuddin became a super rich individual and that's why after Daim, the Prime Ministers of Malaysia, including the present one, keep the portfolio for themselves. I doubt when in office, Anwar could save so much and what was his salary then. Certainly, I got paid more then, as a manager of a company, and yet I couldn't afford to buy a house until when I was about to retire and even then I had to take a loan. But here we see this guy having an office in a foreign country, spending as much as USD 2.0 million, and going on overseas trips regularly, and so on.

Malaysians must take cognizant of this fact and should never allow this man to be in power for then he would enrich himself beyond anyone can imagine. Take for example the latest thing on Hosni Mubarak. We are told that he has accumulated riches to the tune of USD 70 billion for himself and his family in his 30 year rule of Egypt. What can he really do with so much money ? To screw himself to death, to buy properties in foreign lands ? And for what. Look at Adolf Hitler. He died a pauper. He unselfishly worked for the nation of Germany, albeit at the expense of millions of deaths.

But these heads of state from the Shah of Iran to Marcos, Suharto, the Tunisian President, and many others simply have one thing in common - greed and selfishness.

Ho! Ho! Ho! And a bottle of rum ...

What I wonder is the Malaysian government going to do with the Somali pirates ? Even if the authorities can convict these Somalis by whatever law they can invoke, why should they spend tax-payers' money to jail them, feed them, and generally look after them in prison ? We have had enough of these Africans giving us problems here than to be aggravated by these bloody Somalis.

What the authorities should have done was to ask the pirates to walk the plank like what the pirates of old did to captured enemies. After all, they are pirates and ought to be treated as such. We should not be concerned about "human rights" when dealing with pirates.

Update 18/02/2011:

The latest I heard from the local media was that if the these pirates were found guilty, they could be hanged. Good, says I, for why should we imprison them and waste taxpayers money looking after them in prison for years and years.

Petrol boats ...

When I read the news on the government awarding contracts for 6 petrol boats for RM 6 billion, I thought that amount of money could buy a battleship or even an aircraft carrier. I had already mellowed towards the BN government after being disappointed with the PKR and thought that perhaps, in the next election, I would vote for BN again. But on hearing these so-called patrol boats were to cost an astronomical RM 6 billion, I might think again about voting BN.

I had successfully persuaded a number of my friends and relatives to vote for monkeys or donkeys in the 2008 general elections, and, as far as I knew, they all voted the way I did. That was how the opposition won many seats. It looks as though the people in BN don't seem to learn anything from the last election.

Get out when not wanted ...

Just like Marcos and the Shah of Iran, Hosni Mubarak is slow in getting out when the people of Egypt clearly demonstrate that he is no longer fit to run the country. I must salute the former President of Tunisia who, at least, stepped down and ran off to Saudi Arabia when clearly, after a few days of rioting, he knew that he was no longer wanted by his people. But this Mubarak seems to cling to power tenaciously. He is thinking as though without him Egypt will be in chaos. He has to go if he wants to save Egypt.