PC 367

Thu Venezuela is Halfway to North Korea
As part of the Venezuelan Festival I went to a talk by the Venezuelan ambassador. Malaysians listening would have been thinking "what a paradise !", Venezuela is becoming.. It was disappointing cos like North Korea there was not a hint of self-critism ie. No respect for the real world.
...When you respect the truth you can improve the world, but when your thoughts become a fantasy world you can’t.

Unfortunately of course he has to conform to the party line, but his speech was on idealogy and weak on the truth about situation. Full of "hey wow the people love Chavez, he's been elected 8 times", we have all these 'misiones' ", "we are cooperating with Cuba and Bolivia".

GREAT but this is far from the true picture of things actually being worse for most people than before. No mention was made of the collapsed currency which means a salary is barely sufficient for food nor of the rampant violent crime rate, smuggling, corruption etc etc .

Lot's of ideology low on facts Of course the poor needed help and the medical misiones can be commended. He did produce figures showing greatly increased operations, but it should be possible by now to produce figures for increased life expectancy by now. Concrete figures were produced for increased literacy so that would seem to be good. No mention was made of indigenous people.

As in many countries I have noticed that when one side get power they do things for their own, and against the others. It's important to INCLUDE ALL, cos the others are not going to disappear and by hurting them you are making future problems for yourself. I knew one problem in Venezuela is that the government is busy nationalising the oil industry, but doesn't have enough of it's own people to run it, so they making a mess of it.

The rich and educated who might do the job have become alienated have often fled. So I asked him about inclusiveness, does he think the rich should take their skills and money to Miami ? He might have mentioned that of course they can't trust many of the rich cos many want to overthrow Chavez and led the oil industry strike, but he gave a politicians answer "Yes some rich, not all don't like Chavez, but the government is a government for all, it's not against anyone. "

There was no olive branch like "we value the business people for their skills and experience and want to work with them to create industry and jobs in Venezuela". I suspect the economy might be becoming top heavy and inefficient as a large super large proportion are government, not private businesses.

I hope that they can see the true picture , not the idealist picture they gave so that then they can concentrate on including all and improve Venezuela instead of getting lost on an idealistic path while the country crumples around them. -- should have asked what's the difference between North Korea and Venezuela. article

I noticed “The Revolution will not be Televised” film is not being shown is that cos the claims don't stand up ? http://www.petitiononline.com/gusano03/

ASLI controversy
UMNO the main Malay party argues that under British Administration : Chinese and Indians had an advantage, so for many years UMNO have had policies to favour Bumi (the Orang Alsi who are indigenous and the Malay who mostly came about 1000 years ago) they get discounts on houses etc, companies bidding for government contracts must have a Bumi partner. It's ridiculous cos not all Bumi are poor and it's the rich who benefit most. So they asked ASLI an independent body to calculate. Instead of telling the government no we don't want to deal with racist calculations they came back with figures showing Bumi controlled 45% of the economy (govt figs always been 18.9% saying "see Bumi are poor") ASLI notes.

See they included upto 70% of the share value government linked companies like Petronas on the grounds that they are Bumi controlled and all the top staff are Bumi. This angered the government who told them to recalculate. You could say they count as Bumi as the government treats them as Bumi when they apply for contracts. Whatever the true figure is irrelevant as it still doesn't show how to focus aid. Meanwhile poor Chinese and Indians suffer while all Bumi including the rich get help.

Also a UM report from 1997 said Bumi had more than 33.7%

Interestingly some people called it Umnoputra & umnoputra companies instead of Bumiputra

Is the PM Bumi since his father was 100% Indian ? wrong his mother's father was Chinese Muslim. But Mahathi's father was Indian who came in the 1900's. I think if you have one Malay ancestor and convert to Islam you count as Malay.

Download The Panda Head Curry - Album
A lot of pretty funny songs about Malaysia : Samy Velu can't speak Malay, Singapore belongs to Malaysia, We hate Jews, but they are so successful ?? Download The Panda Head Curry - Album

Data Mining - lecture
The hosting Malaysian professor knew his stuff, but the presentation was done by 2 French professors whose expertise in something else cos it didn't seem they knew what they were talking about. Boring

Bloody Rapid KL - @ Bangsar village the I didn't run cos people were at the stop, bus came fast couldn't go in the bus bay cos people were parked in it. Stopped, but the car driver said didn't need bus, so bus went. The other people weren't waiting for the bus, just sitting

Sat :
Lot of Malay events. On the way to Kl Tower bumped into Scout Jamboree at St Joseph's school. At the tower 11pm all the bars closed or full of weddings ; can sit on Balcony and get a coke from the machine
Sun - Venezuelan Music/dance
stupid-me I didn't want to be too early so I missed half of it. Actually very good if you like Latin stuff (I don't).

Went to meet up with other HCers in PJ Selva, CK, Cheng, Kal, Mike, MC, Wu Lu, Jeany,
next meet 21st Ken Chong

Mon - FINAS Merdeka Documentaries preview
Lunch with Selva 4 Fl Sungei Wan Plaza has BROWN RICE

Merdeka Documentaries preview : There was no time on the leaflet , and it was 5.10pm before I phoned, so no answer. Turned out to be 10-5pm so missed it. 1.they were all patriotic 2. All Malay

3. Got to go to the night market,. Durians are very cheap, they seem to react with other food you eat..nice, but this time I suddenly felt exhausted and got a headache.

Tue


Wed : Carey Island with Selva
We went out to this river delta island, which is a large flat area of palm oil plantation. We went onto Morib beach and Jugra Hill

Carey Island They wouldn't let us onto the plantation part so we quickly visited the Orang Asli village and untidy beach and the end of the 12Km road

VW guys excellent info, good info from NST good info fromallmalaysia, Good Photos, History, good blog,
Good Orang Alsi info, Orang Asli info,
I see the south Klang Valley expressway is supposed to cut across Pulau Carey right through the guardhouse across the island and cross the river again to West Port
Also tourist magazine reports $12m is to be spent to turn Carey into a heritage center.

Golden Hope sells more than 3 billion Rm, profit 750 million Rm

Morib Beach The Blog guys info, Cuti on Morib Beach
Selangor Morib Beach

Jugra Hill Vintage Jugra , we missed the old prison also More Jugra Info ,

We went onto Viking Restaurant from by the river to eat and see the sunset We forgot to test local alcohol : Toddy

My KL links page

NEW KL links page

view from Jugra to Carey Island. The Indigenous village is the cleared area in front of the white watertank

the map shows a number of attractions like eagle reserve, etc inside the estate, but from the internet it seems maybe these are future plans, and anyway they wouldn't let us in.

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