Seconds to War

I was watching the newly released Pentagon video of the Hormitz Straits Incident (Click the title above to watch the video yourself) at Breitbart and here were the thoughts that ran through my head:
1. The Iranians appeared to be moving rather recklessly close to the US warships.

2. All it would take is a trigger-happy Iranian hot head to shoot at a US warship and the next dangerous upgrade in the phase of the current WW3 is on.

3. One can imagine the anxious warship crew who are experiencing the whole hair-raising, sweaty episode, probably on several occasions of a lesser provocative kind. If one of the crew members had lost his or her nerve, a single shot at the boats could very well trigger an emotional outburst of outrage by Iranian mobs and their sympathisers around the world!

4. It takes steadfast courage to be in a tense situation in a volatile part of the world where terrorism and lawlessness thrives. The American naval crew deserves praise for showing restraint at present. Would this last?

The New Face of the Enemy

My good men, are you prepared for an army of ... charming female soldiers??? You're going to break out in profuse sweating .... Your hearts will be thumping like hell and your watering open mouths would be drooling!!! In the next conventional war, if there is ever one again (considering the Free World is already presently waging a bitter one against militant Islamists in the Middle East) could highly likely see more females joining in the dirty bloody fray... So just take a look at how cool these amazons look! Notice their high heels....hmmmnnnnn....Could you fire off a shot at any of these beauties in combat? Maybe shoot them by selecting the worst looking or less sexy one first? (My word! Aren't humans sexist?!).

Is Teheran Smart?

Left: FLASHBACK: Deja vu...Sept. 20th, 2001 Borneo Post news before Afghanistan was attacked and liberated by the Americans. Click to enlarge it.

The Jihadist scumbags never learnt from the first hard-hitting lesson that the U.S. taught in 2001 after the cowardly attack on their peaceful innocent civilians, killing thousands in a single day on September 11, 2001.

This time the U.S. will be smarter and not allow itself to be victimised first with the loss of heavy lives from suicidal Iranian fanatics in power, right from the very top so-called spiritual ayatollah down to his running dog, cunning highly intelligent engineering president and his subservient followers.

True, the U.S. unfortunately got itself into this ugly mess following receipt of faulty intelligence on nuclear weapons, when they got rid of one of the world's most evil dictator, Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, with the iron-fisted ruler gone, Iraq has fallen apart. Then the Jihadist terrorists, al Quieda and other wanna-be jihadists united together to fight one hated foe through various means from suicide attacks to car and roadside bombings, aided in logistics-arms and mega bucks by oil-rich Jihadist Iran and other wanna-be Jihadist Islamic nations and individuals clandestinely in various devious ways.

Well, President Bush can be as good an actor as Reagan was. His critics scoff and laugh at the widely read and seen captured moments of his dumbness.

No one should be fooled. As someone who enjoyed acting myself in the past, I admire his skillful theatrical skills in expressions and actions which would fool many including Malaysia's national news agency, Bernama. The agency's recent pre-Malaysian Independence Day interview with Bush gave the impression to many Malaysians Bush has almost kosong (empty) knowledge about Malaysia and its Prime Minister.

Believe me, I think the guy is smart and of course he surely has the best intelligence available on everything and every political world leader in his hands. Man, I tell you, like Santa, an American president as the world's superpower leader would know who has been naughty, bad and who has been good!

So Iran has not only been naughty, it has been bad and still is bad! It craves for a new toy-the almighty nuclear bomb. Like bad old hard-line China, it aids terrorists against a foreign force and like the Nazis under Adolf Hitler, it seeks the destruction of the Jews, craves for dominion by military means of nearby territories (in the middle-east) and ultimately, the rest of the world. What a dream of Islamizing the whole world like in the ancient bloody days of using the Arab sword to covert others!

Well, the U.S. will be Hercules...mighty and strong in fighting and beating all forms of powerful monsters and armies...but the problem with al-quieda, the Taliban and a jihadist nation like Iran and other wanna-be deceptive jihadist nations is that it is like the ancient hydra, a mythical water snake that will keep growing heads after each one has been cut off and survive ... So the U.S. and the free world has to solve the persistant problem which is definitely and fortunately solvable as Hercules did ingeniously with his fire...Best of luck, Land of the Brave!

Malaysia: Becoming Lebanon 2?

The following interesting letter is found in Malaysiakini dated June 6, 2007 and I believe it is worthy as food for thought: Malaysia need not go Lebanon’s way

Neil Khor, Cambridge Jun 5, 07 3:53pm Adjust font size:

The Lina Joy case has brought into light Malaysia's U-turn from being a secular state. It is an acknowledgment of a reality that many find unpalatable and I believe, an equal number may find comforting. In 1992, the year I entered university in Kuala Lumpur, the trend was clearly underway. The clearest sign of a significant social shift could be witnessed in increasing numbers of female students taking to wearing the veil. Most did it out of peer pressure but there was a significant number who did it out of conviction that somehow they had connected with an international movement associated, at that time, with Bosnians prosecuted for their religious faith. (The following year Bosnian Muslim refugees visited Universiti Malaya). By 1996, the year the Internet made its appearance in campus, the idea that the veil was accompanied by a distinct-type of attitude was firmly entrenched. There was a clear schism in social interactions. As an English-educated Chinese person, I was in between a growing ethnocentrism and an emergent middle-class bourgeois Islamism. The gap was too wide to bridge. Today, that gap is a chasm. Just before he left office, Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced that PAS' platform was no longer relevant. Malaysia was, by all accounts, an Islamic state. Of course, to the fundamentalists, this was nonsense but today, reality speaks louder than words. We are an Islamic state in the most awkward sense of the term. Malaysia is an Islamic state when it comes to its Muslims and a secular state when it deals with its non-Muslims. Through adaptation to local conditions, this strange double-feature of our legal system has emerged. But this is an untenable bifurcation as the civil service, including the law courts, are increasingly dominated by Muslims. Today, the problem is not felt by non-Muslims but by some Muslims themselves. Why, a Malay friend asks, should Malays be restricted by another set of rules? The answer is quite simple (again in Mahathir's words): it is the price a Malay pays for his privileges. This view is based on the fact that Malay rights and Umno dominance cannot be upheld without the pairing of religion and ethnicity. PAS will never come to power if the Islamic state it promotes gives equality to all Muslims regardless of ethnicity for then, the non-Muslims might convert and then where will the Malays be? But this is not a long term solution. Optimists will say that this is but another example of Malaysian adaptation, its flexibility that has so far ensured its survival. Think of our two educational systems, our public and private sectors, our mutually exclusive lives. There was another country, some decades ago, that had a similar bifurcation in many aspects of its national life. It flourished for a while but then got mired in larger international wars. Lebanon was one of the Arab world's most progressive states but today it is in shambles. Malaysia need not go down that road. But neither can we take for granted the freedom that we have to determine our national development. From the standpoint of Malaysians who believe in secularism and the idea that the ‘church’ and state should be mutually exclusive, it is obvious that this aim is not really achievable. For the Islamists who believe in a full-Islamic state, a theocracy where mullahs decide on public policy, the fight will be self-destructive. Recent history has shown that Malaysians are a docile lot. A people who ‘forget easily’ the mistakes of government, the trespasses of politicians. We all have what the Malays call a ‘tolak ansur’ (push and retreat) attitude. But this is not historically always true. Not when both groups feel their back is to the wall. There are some Muslims who feel that they have already compromised too much and there are non- Muslims who feel cheated by the promises of nation-building participation. There is very little middle ground between the two groups. In such a situation, it is easy to give in to despair. But doing so leaves the real problem untreated. The more we bicker amongst ourselves, the more likely we are to be left behind globally. The more distracted we are about politics, the less we focus on the important issue of transforming our workforce so that it can better integrate into an economy beyond manufacturing. There is also the issue of recycling and future water and energy woes. Perhaps, if we paused for just a few minutes a day, we might realise that we have to deal with all these important issues. But alas, a frog in a well, as an old Malay proverb tells us, has its eyes fixed only on the sky.

DAY 2: Home, Sweet Home...

"ALAMAK!!! Wait, fellow crew members! Is this really our beloved Mother Earth??? Why is there a ring around it, not unlike Jupiter???! A nuclear war has broken out??? Iran has lost its marbles??? Das ist eine Schweinerel!!! Bei der ist wohl eine Schraube los!!!"

"Captain, all bearings are accurate: we are on a direct course to planet Earth."

"Das ist unwahrscheinlich....Hmmmmmnnnn... What are we looking at?"

To be continued ...

A Common Hobby?

Okay, okay-it's that cheeky devil, Archie! Don't the girls in Archie's life and female readers as well just love this lovable cute rascal?

It's a hobby of mine, collecting comics just like this particular copy displayed in all its glory here.

It's quite an extensive collection, collected through the many years - war comics like the Commando series, War Picture Library series, Pocket War Library series; cowboy comics like Combat Picture Library and sci-fi Space Adventures series....

Then there are all the other Marvel comics with titles such as Superman, Aquaman, Batman and so forth. In addition, there are others like Disney comics featuring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, et al and even Classics Illustrated-comics based on famous novels by writers such as Charles Dickens and Samuel L. Clemens; supernatural ones like Tales of the Unknown and Suspense... Chinese comics featuring funny guy Lau Fu Tze and even Bruce Lee, and many more.

Really quite a lot in my private library, if you include spy thrillers and Vietnam war ones as well.

Yup! I've got Superman's special wedding edition in mint condition, courtesy of an old Canadian girlfriend!

Any comic freaks out there like me? Wanna trade? Let's say we'll forever be young with comics around us. Besides, they would be interesting heirlooms to leave behind for all our great grandkids!

Now I wonder if I could make a little fortune by selling a few of the rare ones on e-bay though ....