Mushroom cloud in peacetime?

Like clockwork, not even dust had settled after the Earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale hit Myanmar; numerous announcements have emerged over the new social media outlets of well-meaning organisations offering services to collect donations for its victims. 

We have had all these so many times before. The earliest of these must surely be the Great Tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, which measured 9.1. The world saw a plethora of bodies going hyperdrive, bending backwards, trying to extract money from the well-meaning but unassumingly naive public. The collection, it seemed, was quite overwhelming. Ten years down the line, a documentary was made about the towns hit by the tsunami. It revealed that only one pledged housing project saw living daylight amongst all the broken promises; that too by the personal effort by an individual, the world-famous singer Ricky Martin.

The same thing happened in Haiti following its devastating 2010 hurricane. The Clinton Foundation jumped in to help its victims and help the island nation get back on its feet. Ten years after the storm, an assessment revealed no sustained improvement to its infrastructure. The only viable projects that seem to have been successfully developed were those that benefited the Foundation and the local cronies.

The latest donation drive to hit the nation is to help the victims of the recent Putra Heights gas pipe explosion. Even though footage coming out of the disaster area is scary, so far, no deaths have been reported; only property damage and bodily injuries have been reported. 

A third-person account provides scant information about the event. Firstly, very few Malaysians knew that we had a methane gas pipe gridline running under or near our houses. We had thought this only happened in Western countries. The line was apparently for industrial purposes. 

As in the case of MH370, the head does not know what the tail is doing. At least, that is the impression I get listening to the official press release of the committee appointed to investigate the disaster. The appointees of the sc-called panel expert to investigate the mishap remain opaque. Their representative does not exude brilliance or confidence that every rock will be turned to reveal the truth. I wonder if the services of academics were called for to get to the root of the explosion. Maybe everyone in power wants the whole fiasco to remain an unsolvable enigma so that none of their shenanigans in cutting corners does not come into the open.   The pressmen at the press meet were no better. Forget investigative journalism; they did not even ask the right questions. Instead of hurling difficult questions at the officious, they squawk random and meaningless questions that a primary student would squeal just to please his teacher.

One netizen pointed out that a leading political party started a donation drive to help the victims. Unfortunately, he also noticed that the given account was that of the political party, not a dedicated account set up for relief.

There are many examples of charity foundation abuse. A charity in the UK started during COVID-19 by the relatives of a 90-something war veteran who wanted to record his progress in recovering from a hip fracture. People were smitten by this nonagenarian, and they donated to his Captain Tom Foundation in droves. Soon, its assets became enormous, so enormous that unnecessary maintenance started showing up in its accounts. The veteran also wrote an autobiography, the proceeds of which went into charity but were taken out for personal use. Long story short, the old man died, The Captain Tom Foundation was investigated, and his daughter Hannah and her husband, who initially helped to establish the charity, were found to have benefitted from its mismanagement and blurring of private and charitable interests. The foundation is now defunct.

A mushroom cloud in peacetime

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A new colonialism tactic?

Clinton Cash (2016)


Another Hilary Clinton bashing documentary made just before the last US elections, written and produced by Trump's former White House chief strategist. It is based on Peter Schweizer's New York Times best-selling book by the same name. The contents of the film are so highly damaging that, if real, Hilary and the Clinton Foundation can be charged with high treason.

When Bill Clinton left the White House after his second term, the Clintons were broke with legal bills involving Monica Lewinsky. Through the Clinton Foundation, also known as Clinton Group Initiative (CGI), Bill started a fund to finance charity works.  Bill gave lectures and was paid through CGI.

Pretty soon CGI was embroiled in brokering deals. They were intermediaries to mediate international oil drilling and mining contracts deals involving dictators in places like Rwanda and Nigeria. The tyrants are feted in the international arena and in return they offer deals to businessmen who in return pay the Clintons handsomely. The arrangement was made easier when Hillary became the State Secretary.

In Haiti, CGI collected funds after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The victims were not helped, but instead, a textile mill deal went through. The Clintons also have the feet immersed in a cesspool of corruption in the Keystone XL Pipeline, an ambitious project to build an oil line from Canada to Louisiana and Texas despite the environmental damages. They helped in securing mining and timber deals in Columbia, oil contracts to the then enemy of the State, Iran. Then there is the Indo-US nuclear deal. Their biggest treason must be brokering uranium deal in Kazakhstan. Because of their wrangling,  through a company set up through this exercise, Russia has come to own 20% of the uranium mines in the USA. That is deemed as a threat to national security. Uranium may go to the hands of rogue nations or individuals who may go on to develop nuclear menace around the world or worse still, on their soil.