Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
More pain than gain for the middle-class by Andrew Ong
Saturday, October 26, 2013
From Malaysiakini : COMMENT
Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's Budget 2014 speech comes as no
surprise: Post-GE13, pretty much the entire population would be taxed
and forced to go cold turkey on various subsidies.
The goods and
services tax (GST) is something which has long been mooted. The Dewan
Rakyat tried to pass the new tax in 2009 but it was put on hold in order
for Najib to safely seek his own mandate. Now
that he has one, albeit with only 47 percent of voters supporting BN,
the premier has no qualms about making the public dig deeper into their
pockets instead of first resolving problems that has plagued his
administration and that of his predecessors - corruption and leakages.
The GST, although it will only be implemented in 2015, is hard to
swallow, especially after the Auditor-General's Report 2012 was
released.
This report has become an annual cringe fest for the
public and a once-in-a-year season for editors and journalists to play
with puns on their headlines for a good week or two.
But the
Najib administration, and administrations before this, are not ones that
can be embarrassed into submission and admitting a mistake.
No.
It wants YOU to pay for their mistakes - for the 44 missing guns, for
K-Pop concerts, for wall clocks that cost RM3,810, for ministry Facebook
pages that cost RM320,000. The list goes on, but expect the report to
be even thicker next year.
Cash handouts for the poor For
2014, the federal government will have even more money to splurge. The
operational expenditure (opex) will be increased by 7.8 percent, from
RM201.8 billion to RM217.7 billion.
This is not in tandem with a
projected 6.3 percent projected increase in revenue between 2013 and
2014 and a drastic 6.4 percent reduction in development expenditure,
which was supposed to be for projects that provide a multiplier effect
for the economy. How
is it possible for the Najib administration to justify urging the
people to tighten their belts when it has never shown the slightest
inclination to do the same?
To make matters worse, Budget 2014
is designed to keep those who don't pay income taxes, or pay a
negligible amount, happy with an increase in cash handouts.
BR1M
3.0 has been increased by a whopping 30 percent to RM650, thereby
partly explaining the opex increase. In essence, Najib is widening the
tax base and then wasting more money for administrative purposes to
disburse it back to low-income earners.
Irony? Not really.
Low-income earners outnumber middle-income earners. The question to ask
is why after decades of Malaysia Plans, we still have a huge swath of
low-income earners who need cash handouts to get by? More
importantly, why despite poverty eradication programmes Malaysia's
income inequality gap is highest in Asia, with the exception of Papua
New Guinea.
No subsidy cuts for fat cats?
What's more ironic is how Najib mentioned in his speech that subsidies
benefit the rich most. He then declared that the best measure to tackle
this is to remove subsidies for sugar altogether. What about the
independent power producers that enjoy generous subsidies from the
government? Shouldn't these fat cats be the first on the chopping block?
Instead of bluntly saying that the public has to pay more so the
government can spend more, Najib provides a meek excuse that removing
subsidies can help prevent diabetes. Has he even checked the mean
waistline of his cabinet? It's likely higher than the national average. It
would be foolish to think that the government will stop here. Expect
fuel prices to go up soon and a supplementary budget or two over the
next 12 month. Narrowing the deficit? Hah! Most voters don't even have a
inkling of it.
If there is one group that will get worked up it
is going to be the middle-income earners, not the "1 percent" and
definitely not the low-income earners. It has pretty much been that way
every Budget. They don't vote BN anyway.
But still, they are
expected to pay their taxes as usual while paying more to ensure their
families are well taken care of. If there can only be one word for the
Najib administration's attitude towards the middle-income earners, it is
going to be "contempt". ANDREW ONG is an assistant news editor at Malaysiakini.
Now
that he has one, albeit with only 47 percent of voters supporting BN,
the premier has no qualms about making the public dig deeper into their
pockets instead of first resolving problems that has plagued his
administration and that of his predecessors - corruption and leakages.
How
is it possible for the Najib administration to justify urging the
people to tighten their belts when it has never shown the slightest
inclination to do the same?
It
would be foolish to think that the government will stop here. Expect
fuel prices to go up soon and a supplementary budget or two over the
next 12 month. Narrowing the deficit? Hah! Most voters don't even have a
inkling of it.
