Thursday, December 19, 2013

Enemy Within The Gates

The bearded Iranian we met on the campus of the University of Western Australia was telling us how they faced off the Shah of Iran's personal body guards. And he wasn't talking about planting a flower in their rifle barrel. He was lobbing molotov cocktails. There's a joke about the boring city, that in event of World War III breaking out, Perth would be the last peaceful city on earth. Reflecting on his macho talk, we wondered how he ended up a student in Australia. And whether he later became one of Ayatollah Khomeini's hostage takers featured in "Argo" the movie. As far as we can recollect, terrorism 101 was not an elective.

Pulitzer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg, he of "Killing Fields" fame, was in Dacca to report on the violent birth of Bangladesh - Bengali for Bengal Nation - when he wrote in one of his dispatches:
"Bengali youths, who just over three months ago were exultantly marching through the streets and shouting their slogans of defiance at the military regime, now talk in whispers, slipping up to foreign newsmen for a few seconds to murmur some information about a massacre, the murder of a family member or the destruction of a village."

Some of those youngsters could be in our midst right now. Desperate men who, armed only with sticks, spears and home-made rifles, have battled the West Pakistani military equipped with planes, bombs, tanks and heavy artillery. Compared to their war scars, Little India was a walk in the park.

We are also housing Cambodians who survived the "agrarian revolution" of the Khmer Rouge and experienced the brutal dictatorship of Hun Sen and his murderous security police. Burmese who may have confronted the military junta who locked up prominent human rights activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, fortunate to survive an assassination attempt. Pinoys who may have marched on the long stretch of Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, more commonly known by its acronym EDSA, in support of the People Power Revolution that unseated Ferdinand Marcos. Thais who could be rooting for their home team in the streets of Bangkok.

That's quite a toxic mix in our melting pot, sanctioned by the Population White Paper. No wonder our firemen turned tail and reversed their vehicle in a hurry, ramming a police car long abandoned by equally terrified cops.

A fifth column is a group of people who undermine a larger group, such as a nation or a besieged city, from within. In the United States at the end of the 1930s, as involvement in the European war loomed, those who feared the possibility of betrayal from within used the newly coined term "fifth column" as shorthand for sedition and disloyalty. If Yaacob Ibrahim is paranoid about cyber warriors, he and the trigger happy "keechiu" general may wish to expand their horizon to scan for real trouble from within our shores.

13 comments:

  1. From 3m to 7m..huat ah..! Come, anybody can play. When 2 in 3 becomes a foreigner in red-dot, not only would firemen and policemen scrambled for their lives, let alone a paper general, the leaders will run too (if they make it fast enough) to their private jets in changi.

    http://www.fifthcolumngames.com/

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMNknh0TyLc

    Let's remind ourselves again, how Gaddaffi was defiant to the very last breadth. He asked the attacker - what did I do to you. They replied - what did you not do for us?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5dF1QnqnFc

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  2. tattler, you are great.

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  3. Haha.......

    The Day Of Reckoning will arrive.

    It will not fail.

    But, there will be no Gaddafi here.

    They not so stupid like him.

    They have France for protection.

    France, the Land for political refugees.

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  4. Great piece. Our villages have been destroyed but the villagers from the countries you mention are here at the invitation of the incumbents. Maybe a yearning for yesteryear? Like the calls for lost hawker fare? Let us worry about the fifth column later. LIke the rioters, we can always deport them without the cumbersome court processes.

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  5. You forgot Tiananmen?
    "If I have to shoot 200,000 students to save China from another 100 years of disorder, so be it."
    - Lee Kuan Yew

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    Replies
    1. Very soon he will met the 200,000.

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    2. I shudder at the values of a man who would not hesitate over the death of 200,000 students.
      In exchange for what?
      An orderly society that is so out of touch with reality that even the elites believe in their own bullshit.

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    3. The little India riot has actually made LKY look silly when not a single shot was fired with a crowd of just 400 let alone 200, 000 students. Surprisingly he has remained silent on the way things have been handled by his son, the police and army, especially taking into account the generals, admirals in his son's cabinet.
      He must have seen the videos of how 400 unarmed south Asian crowd can force a hasty retreat of the men in blue. Our surrounding neighbours will surely take note of this, acquiring the latest military hardware counts for nothing when the leaders are essentially cowardly and have little support from its people. LOL

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  6. PAP has imported trouble for us. Singapore will sink.

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  7. Honestly, Tatler you would seem to make a better prince than our clown with the breadth & depth of your brains. Regrettably if your father had been LKY or even GCT, I think we would have achieved the Swiss standard of living without all those PAP empty promises !!!

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  8. Did you hear this video?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5dF1QnqnFc

    Gadaffi is called the vampire of Libya.

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  9. Who are the REAL enemies of this country, the ones who sold this country away, the Quislings? Are these migrant workers the Fifth Column? Maybe some, those who benefited from the largesse of this regime, like the Employment Pass holders; but not the majority menial work permit holders, who are themselves being exploited. The Quislings, the enemies within, are the Establishment and their elites, cronies and connections, who run this country for their own aggrandizement, and not for the benefit of the people and the good of the country.

    There is this adage, that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Therefore the exploited migrant workers are the friends of the people, they are in the same sampan v2, and are the enemies of the Establishment. Their brave actions to rid the shackles, considered as "trouble" to the Establishment, are commendable, until the insidious policies of this Regime are reversed, or there is a change of Regime.

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  10. Well....

    I don't intend to fight for the PAP gov't.

    They can go fight all the troubles they actually created and are fully responsible for...

    Please also note they are also already very "well paid" by the peoples of Singapore.

    So let them do the sacrificing and dying themselves.

    I just pop out the Tele and eat pop-corns + watch the stupidity as it unfolds.

    Stupid is as Stupid does.

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