Benjamin Chong

The new reality. Shatter the old.

[Benjamin Chong @BenjmnC]

Yes!

[Bitcoin Malaya @bitcoinmalaya]

Unpopular opinion:

Being B40 doesn’t mean you are bad with money.

But being B40 with RM35k in high-interest credit card debt is a serious red flag.

Fix your own finances before asking to manage the country’s.

[Benjamin Chong @BenjmnC]

@bitcoinmalaya Yeah, I doubt he’ll manage tax payers’ money responsibly. He’s already shit with his own. And PSM posted the declaration like it’s some kinda flex. 👎

[Thevesh @Thevesh]

After almost 4 years of hard work, I'm very happy to share something which I hope will be a game-changer for election data in Malaysia:

https://t.co/hW0OIDm594

To cut a (very) long story short, the site gives you access to Malaysia's COMPLETE electoral history. Every election, every candidate, every party, every seat - all there at your fingertips.

There are 5 types of datasets available:
• Parlimen/DUN-level results (the 'official' results, covering every single election since 1955)
• Parlimen/DUN-level maps (covering every single boundary-drawing exercise since 1954)
• Anonymised individual-level voter rolls for GE-13, GE-14, and GE-15, as well as Johor 2022 and N9 2023 (more to come soon)
• Saluran (!!!!) level results for GE-13, GE-14, and GE-15, as well as Johor 2022 and N9 2023 (also more to come soon)
• DM-level maps for the latest set (versions going back to 2003 will follow eventually)

Enjoy!

Data-cleaning and curation is bitter work, but once it's done once, everyone can reap the benefits.

[Just Another Pod Guy @TMTLongShort]

The same people who have been loudly proclaiming everything Trump says is a lie are now foaming at the mouth taking his every word literally to paint a picture of complete capitulation to Iran.

These same people were loudly proclaiming that Trump was in Israel’s pocket just two weeks ago.

These same people were saying there was no way this ends in anyway but global depression and $200 oil just three weeks ago.

These same people had no criticism to offer for the JCPOA but now gleefully proclaim Trump just got “cucked and fisted”.

Instead of conjecture and hyperbole why not wait to actually see what the end state for all this is.

So far the facts are Iran has been bombed into the Stone Age, a full cohort of their leaders have been killed, they have been under economic blockade for months, their navy has been sunk, the GCC is firmly against them, OPEC is over, oil prices have not gone out of control, Trump is doing better in polls, stocks are up, Europe and apac are firmly reliant on us for energy access….and Iran won’t have nukes anytime soon.

Your mistake is falling for the spin that the IRGC needs to put on things to maintain domestic legitimacy and the Trump admin goes along with it because unlike Biden vs Putin this admin understands off ramps and not cornering drowning rats into election season.

The day we pay Iran out of our coffers money that was not theirs to begin with I’ll publicly mea culpa.

Until then STFU and watch how this plays out 🫡

[Rafizi Ramli @rafiziramli]

Anak muda hari ini menjauh daripada politik. Saya faham. Tidak boleh salahkan sesiapa yang skeptikal.

Sebab apa? Sebab selama ini kita dengar janji, tetapi hidup tak berubah.

Kos sara hidup meningkat. Nak miliki rumah sendiri makin jadi angan-angan. Ramai anak muda mula ragu sama ada masa depan mereka akan lebih baik daripada generasi ayah dan ibu mereka.

Perasaan kecewa itu bukan sesuatu yang pelik.

BERSAMA ini tidak ditubuhkan sambil berlagak ada semua jawapan.

Bukan penyelamat. Tidak datang untuk berkata, “Serahkan kepada kami, kami selesaikan semua.”

Apa yang ditawarkan ialah platform. Platform untuk rakyat, khususnya anak muda, bersuara, berkongsi idea, dan terlibat secara langsung menyelesaikan isu yang menekan hidup mereka sendiri.

Perubahan yang berkekalan tidak lahir daripada seorang pemimpin. Tidak lahir daripada satu parti. Ia lahir apabila rakyat sendiri turun, mencabar cara lama, dan membentuk masa depan yang mereka mahu lihat.

Jika anda masih skeptikal, itu hak anda. Kami hormat.

Tetapi ingat satu perkara. Negara ini tidak akan jadi lebih baik kalau semakin ramai memilih untuk berdiri di tepi dan menjauh daripada proses perubahan.

Perubahan tidak menunggu orang yang berdiri di tepi.

[Dinesh D'Souza @DineshDSouza]

If Elon would merely turn over his trillion dollars to the government, think of what the politicians could do with his money.

Feel free to add your own suggestions, but here are a few of my ideas, drawn from the progressive wishlist:

[Harris Zainul @harriszainul]

I saw someone describing that type of Malay people as “Tatler Malays” and I’m done man.

[Amirul Ruslan @amirulruslan]

Awani giving Farhash a premium blowie with balls cupped, FMT aggressively attacking Rafizi... We're so back... Peak late stage BN mainstream media aesthetic are in again...

[48 Laws Of Power Bot @48_quotes]

A monkey was carrying two handfuls of peas.

One little pea dropped out.

He tried to pick it up, and spilt twenty.

He tried to pick up the twenty, and spilt them all.

Then he lost his temper, scattered the peas in all directions, and ran away.

FABLES,
Leo Tolstoy,
1828-1910

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

Capitalists: “If you want to end poverty, create more wealth.”

Socialists: “If you want to end poverty, eat the wealth creators.”

[ᴊᴏᴇ ʟᴇᴇ @iamjoelee]

You know why this is so disturbing?

When a national athele (yes, I see no difference even if she was a para athlete) wins seven gold medals and three silver medals in the Asean Para Games and has to struggle to make ends meet.

MEANWHILE, shitty footballers live the ballin' life while NEVER doing anything for the name of the country or even their sport.

[Rafizi Ramli @rafiziramli]

Eight years ago today, Malaysians queued up at schools just like these.

Most of us didn’t actually think it would happen. We hoped. We showed up.

But deep down, many of us weren’t sure a single vote could change 61 years of the same government.

And then it did.

We did it.

Six years on, it’s hard to know how to feel about all of it.

A government that fell in 22 months.

Three prime ministers without a single election.

Another vote that gave us a unity government that, honestly, still doesn’t feel like what people queued up for back in 2018.

Reforms that were promised are either half-done or quietly forgotten. The feeling of “different faces, but a lot of the same feelings”.

I’ve had this conversation so many times now, with friends, with family, and I keep hearing the same thing.

“I’ve given up. The government disappoints me. The opposition isn’t any better.”

I don’t think that’s apathy. I think that’s what exhaustion sounds like after years of hoping.

But here’s the thing about political cycles.

They end.

And when they do, people who said they’ve given up somehow find themselves back at the polling station.

Pen in hand, doing the one thing that actually changed something once before.

We’re getting close to that moment again.

And if 2018 taught us anything, it’s that we’re more capable of surprising ourselves than we think.

[Jalil Rasheed @jalilword]

(1) I’ll tell a story about Singapore’s public services in action. We had a leak in our kitchen. Thought it was internal piping & got it fixed. Turned out it was not.

[Benjamin Chong @BenjmnC]

🎯

[Bitcoin Malaya @bitcoinmalaya]

@azrulmohdkhalib @firdyfire I don’t think such attack on T20 is fair.

If you earn RM6K, your wife earns RM5K, congrats now you are in T20.

They are productive citizens contributing to the country

Do you hate middle class so much that you can’t wait to penalise them?

[James Chin @jameschin110]

This guy is mistaken on one crucial point.
He assumes the NEP and Bumiputera policies were primarily designed to uplift the broader Malay community. In reality, from the mid-1970s onwards, the NEP was increasingly hijacked by a small group of elite Malays, often in partnership with established Chinese tycoons who provided the capital, and turned into a vehicle for personal enrichment.
By the time Mahathir Mohamad became PM in 1981, he recognised this dynamic and deliberately reshaped it. He bypassed the old Chinese business elites by cultivating a new class of loyal Malay (and selected Chinese) tycoons who owed their positions directly to him. This intricate patronage network was largely orchestrated by Mahathir and Daim Zainuddin, and the pattern has been extensively documented, including many court cases.

The arrangement was simple: these elites were allowed to accumulate substantial wealth through NEP-linked opportunities, provided they channelled millions in cash back into UMNO during elections.
Over time, the wider UMNO leaders observed and adopted these practices, which gave rise to full-blown “money politics” from the late 1980s.
These new tycoons were not only expected to finance the party during general elections; they also began interfering in internal UMNO contests by bankrolling favoured candidates, particularly ketua bahagians. This financial control ensured that challengers to Mahathir had almost no chance of success through party elections from the 1990s onwards. You had to be part of Mahathir's faction to get a piece of the action.
Much of the wealth generated through NEP mechanisms was also used to acquire and control major media outlets, effectively placing the entire Malaysian media under UMNO’s influence.

UMNO will naturally deny this version of events, but there is ample scholarly research, including work done in Malaysian universities, that supports my version.

This is the real history behind the NEP and UMNO’s long dominance. Something worth reflecting on as the party celebrates its 80th anniversary.
Happy 80th UMNO - the rentier economy today was designed by you and its still there. The current move to increase bumiputera participation to 50% (watch video) is all about more easy money to be made. The ordinary Malays are still fooled by you into thinking you are defending them in the name of KMI. Nothing I say here will change their mind. This is how strong KMI is in the Malay community.

#Malaysia #UMNO #Capital #Bumiputera #NEP #NewEconomicPolicy #Chinese #KetuananMelayuIslam #RealHistory

https://t.co/nhydl6aRve

[Just Another Pod Guy @TMTLongShort]

What seems to be breaking a lot of people’s brains when trying to analyze the ongoing chess board is their unwillingness to think abstractly enough to appreciate why you need to inflict pain on your supposed allies to ultimately drive a decoupling.

Going into this the Trump admin demonstrated it could tighten sanctions on Russian energy in a way that Biden never could. Ukraine was winning back territory.

Now all of a sudden Russia is the biggest beneficiary of a prolonged SoH closure. The US seems amenable to blowing the barn door wide open and letting Putin monetize this event without sanctions at much higher energy prices. More money for Putin = more soldiers and drones and all of a sudden ukraines gains look more tenuous.

Meanwhile European industry once again is getting squeezed on two sides. American energy prices are going to diverge and remain muted while China will continue to subsidize via its strategic reserves and Russian inflow. Europe meanwhile is going to be paying through the nose. Making worse it’s already fairly grim loss of industrial share.

Now the “global south” specifically Pakistan and India are utterly fucked. If the U.S. decides to prolong the conflict… which it can absolutely do without material cost in the form of boots on the ground… the loss of even five million barrels per day is going to disproportionally screw the lowest bid in an unsanctioned market.

All of this is obvious. But the question is why? And why now?

And the only rational answer is decoupling.

If you wanted to enforce the transshipment clause into the July review there is a benefit to having the world over a barrel. Not only do you dictate where tankers in ME are going you also can escalate at will and get Qatars gas fields blown up if you’re in the mood which in turn means the GCC are going to do whatever you tell them including direct flows where you want them. And ofc you can weaponize American LNG and also ramp VZ if possible (realistically no, but who knows).

But there are also second and third order effects.

What does this do to dollar liquidity? How much worse do sovereign balance sheets get if this continues? When do citizens in the global south start rioting? What does this do to consumption of discretionary goods and therefore imports from China?

And most importantly how effectively can Trump leverage the chaos to get emergency measures in the US that help him into midterms?

Deregulate energy? Stimulate consumer? Lower rates? Ramp weapons manufacturing?

It’s complex. It’s chaotic. This whole playbook is borderline batshit. But there is a playbook and denying it at this point is ignorance or derangement.

Fuck it we ball 🫡

[Benjamin Chong @BenjmnC]

@CynicalPublius You omitted South East Asia. Where do you think we’ll be in this realignment?

[Benjamin Chong @BenjmnC]

Yes!

[𝖠𝖿𝗋𝖺𝗅 🦌369 @AfralAbdullah]

Allow me to leave a message for PKR President DS Anwar Ibrahim (@anwaribrahim) and Deputy President — who is also his daughter — Nurul Izzah Anwar (@n_izzah), before I submit my party exit form online.

Like it or not, believe it or not, PKR today is not in most promising state.

The divisions stemming from the 2025 party elections have clearly weakened the party’s unity and strength.

As President and Deputy President, both of you may choose to continue listening to those around you — including the #Ceplos or leaders from the #Damai cluster. That is entirely your prerogative.

However, it would be unfortunate if a party that has endured so much struggle were to end up like Parti Semangat 46 (PS46), especially when this once-“parti derita” is now on the verge of power.

PS46 itself was born out of an internal crisis following allegations of irregularities in the vote counting for the UMNO presidency election, which eventually led to its formation by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah (Ku Li).

Allegations of irregularities in party elections—whether in UMNO, PKR, or elsewhere—undermine transparency and integrity, and if such concerns are ignored, they eventually risk damaging the party itself.

Since 1998, I have given my moral support to you and PKR from its very beginning.

However, what has since unfolded within the party leaves me with no choice but to say goodbye.

I got nothing to hide - my friends & I will insha-Allah rally behind your former deputy, YB @rafiziramli (RR) .

I genuinely feel that neither you nor PKR deserves my support. My friends and I feel it is time to stand behind RR and his commitment to #RealReform, just as we once stood behind you.

In conclusion, I can only wish you and PKR the best of luck in GE16.

Tak saperti di negara-negara saperti Thailand, Singapura, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Argentina, dll — di Malaysia, mengundi (dalam pilihanraya) bukan satu perkara yang wajib (compulsory).

Di negara saperti tersebut diatas, pengundi berdaftar boleh dikenakan denda atau hukuman-hukuman lain yg telah dimaktubkan jika mereka gagal membuang undi.

Dalam senario politik masa kini, ramai berpendapat mengundi parti sedia ada tidak menjanjikan pembaharuan ataupun perubahan, kerana apapun parti yang dipilih, hasilnya tetap sama — 2×5.

Ini kerana dinamika politik semasa yg menjurus kearah tiada satu parti/koalisi yg boleh meraih majoriti mudah di parlimen.

Gabungan parti/koalisi yang merupakan seteru/musuh politik sewaktu pilihanraya mungkin diperlukan sebelum sebuah kerajaan baru dapat ditubuhkan.

Jika itu berlaku — undi parti A = A+B+C+D+dll

Itu menyebabkan kecenderungan untuk tidak keluar mengundi (abstain) pada Pru-16 semakin sering kita dengar kebelakangan ini.

Untuk memberi pengundi pilihan alternatif dan/atau menggalakkan pengundi keluar mengundi, ada baiknya satu blok politik baru diwujudkan sebagai 'kuasa ketiga'.

Pru-16 tentu sahaja tidak menjanjikan apa-apa, jauh sekali untuk membentuk kerajaan, namun, itu langkah permula'an sebelum berdepan dengan pilihanraya-pilihanraya yg seterusnya.

Blok ini boleh sahaja menjadi pembangkang yg berkesan diparlimen, memainkan peranan semak & imbang.

My friends and I are eagerly awaiting June, when RR is expected to unveil his plans for PRU16.

#RealReform #RR #RafiziRamli #GE16 #KuasaKetiga

✍️ Afral's Essentials; “Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching.”

[Thevesh @Thevesh]

Never in my life did I think the state would be weaponised this way under the 'Reformasi' government.

Semua rakyat Malaysia yg ingin hidup dgn tenteram harus mengambil tahu ttg isu ini.

Mengapa?

To me, philosophy government itu agak simple (bukan senang, tapi simple).

Pertama, hapuskan SEMUA benda yg korup, dan letak semak imbang (check and balance) yg sgt ketat.

Barulah pergi yg kedua, iaitu menggerakkan birokrasi kerajaan utk mencapai benda yg bagus.

Mengapa buat yg pertama dulu?

Sebab dalam mana² negara, jurang kuasa antara rakyat dgn apparatus kerajaan ini sgt² besar.

Apabila machinery kerajaan boleh disalahgunakan, mereka boleh musnahkan kehidupan seseorang rakyat biasa:
• Saman dan burukkan nama
• Masukkan ke lokap
• Bekukan akaun
• Bekukan pasport
• Byk² lagi yg saya tk nk sebut

Jgn haraplah nak lawan jika bukan drpd golongan berada/berkuasa.

That's why—the first priority is to put in place every possible mechanism to LIMIT the powers and potential for abuse of government. Only then comes everything else.

So, although of course I am furious at what is happening specifically to James, this is not just about James.

It is about the weaponisation of the state.

This is a red line for me, as it should be for any Malaysian who believes in the right of citizens to live in peace, especially those who have served their nation.