GST? Lobster? Why, it's a Kerbau!

Recently. Rafizi Ramli proposed reintroducing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) capped at a maximum rate of 5% as part of the Bersama shadow Budget 2027.


What a hypo!!!

Recall in 2015, when Najib introduced the GST at 6%, the bloke frequently mocked the exemption of lobsters from GST while ordinary items faced taxation.

He didn't mention the fact that GST applied to 'cooked' items whilst uncooked (fresh, raw) foodstuff (even if a lobster) were exempt from the tax.

Then there was even a very naughty news article (can't recall which news media) bullsh*tting about a certain Makcik being unable to buy kerang (to replenish her much needed 'iron') because the GST blasted the price of kerang into high orbit. Uncooked (fresh, raw) kerang was in reality exempt from GST but apart from that first lie, the real evil was in the additional lie, namely, GROSSLY inflating the alleged GST on even raw kerang into far more, way way MORE than the 6%, a double, nay triple lie.

The following was what I blogged on in 2017:

GST again, wakakaka

Alas, not many interesting news for kaytee to blog on today so I'll revisit the 'fake news' on the so-called effect of GST on prices of kembong and kerang, wakakaka.

don't f-blame me - I'm still the same ikan, un-GST-ed as ever, blame f-fake news

Yessirree, I had previously posted 'fake news' of fresh seafood (kembong and kerang) prices supposedly gone astronomical because of the evil GST, but no one, including the responsible reporter, said anything about fresh seafood being NOT subjected to GST.

Let's re-visit one 'naughty' example:

Once known as the “poor man’s fish”, the possibility that ikan kembung might become a price-controlled item is perhaps a better economic indicator for ordinary Malaysians instead of growth figures issued by the government.

The price of the humble fish in the mackerel family has been rising since the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST) in 2015.

That's right, the poor GST has been innocently blamed for the rise in a non-GST-ed item, namely fresh food including fresh fish. The rise in price could be due to a number of reasons, like goods cartel, greed of fishmonger, market forces, weather, etc, but the season is to blame GST regardless, even if no GST has been involved, wakakaka.

That 'naughty' example has been what 'fake news' is, published sometime ago presumably to invoke angry/adverse feelings against, in the above stated case, an innocent GST.

A pathetic unscrupulous pariah 'fake news' but pretty effective in rousing anger amongst kampung voters.

OK then, another one - Siti Zahara who is anaemic said she often buys cockles when the dizziness gets the best of her but has also cut down on that of late.

"The doctor advised me to eat cockles or liver (as an iron supplement) because of my anaemic condition."

“Before GST, cockles cost about RM4 per kilo. Now it’s about RM10. So, I buy half a kilo. You can imagine how little that is when cooked.”

The 'fake news' aimed to show that with GST, price of kerang had leapt from RM4 to a humongous RM10.

By the by, I wonder whether there was really an anaemic 'Siti Zahara' that the reporter supposedly interviewed? Wakakaka.

That piece of 'fake news' about kerang was the most humongous piece of bullshit, depicting the difference between a so-called pre-GST-priced kerang at RM4 to presumably a post-GST-priced kerang at RM10.

Who cares if there is no GST on cockles, because such 'fake news' would be believed by the 'already converted'.

The sad thing has been the 'already converted' were considered as 'gullible guppies' by their political parties who wanted to incite them to vote for their parties.

why not NOW?  takut apa?

while as PM, didn't mahathir dislike foreigners especially orang putih interfering in Malaysian affairs?  

wakakaka, but which one

Even if there is GST on on a non-GST-ed kerang, 6% of RM4 only amounts to a round figure of 25 sen. Why RM10?

So could that reporter explain her "Before GST, cockles cost about RM4 per kilo. Now it’s about RM10."

But the point has been how 'fake news' has deliberately exaggerated the impact of GST even on a non-GST-ed item, to wit, from RM4 to a staggering RM10.

The aim has been obvious, thanks Siti Zahara, hope your anaemia has now been ameliorated by the good news (not fake news) that kerang is NOT subjected to GST.

The 'fake news' could only be described as highly mischievous or even evil. Very unscrupulous lah!

But wait, for this post there's MORE, wakakaka.

Many anti-GST visitors patiently explained to me that the price increase had been a reflection of transport cost increases due to GST on petrol, which presumably add on to the overall price of kerang - but from RM4 to RM10???

Wait wait, is there a GST on Petrol? Be honest and answer this, you gullible guppies, wakakaka.

But but but you would say ... petrol prices had gone up.

True but WTF has that got to do with GST?

OPINION | "Why Is A Chinese-Muslim Convert Preacher Being Sued Over an Indian Issue...?!!"

Malaysia's #1 Content Aggregator

OPINION | "Why Is A Chinese-Muslim Convert Preacher Being Sued Over an Indian Issue...?!!"

12 Oct 2026 • 2:30 PM MYT

JK Joseph
Repentant ex-banker who believes in truth, compassion and some humour

Credit Image: Sinar Harian

​​Don't all religions of the world teach humanity to live peacefully, to show mercy, and not to sow hatred and division in the community?


​Popular Chinese-Muslim convert preacher Firdaus Wong is back in the news again—this time in a controversy involving India. Yes, you read that right!



​Recently, it was reported that Klang Member of Parliament (MP) V. Ganabatirau has filed a defamation suit against the renowned preacher over alleged social media posts concerning the latter's remarks on the Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) programme.


​According to the DAP lawmaker, Firdaus had allegedly questioned his loyalty to the nation in a “sarcastic” manner just because he had reportedly requested Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ease bureaucratic hurdles for eligible Malaysians applying for OCI status.



​Naturally, what many would have been prompted to ask is this: Why do popular freelance preachers with hundreds of thousands of social media followers want to meddle in affairs that have no clear connection to their own religious beliefs?


​Incidentally, Firdaus is well known for his association with controversial preacher Zakir Naik—another highly popular figure but disliked by the local Hindu community and viewed by many as a threat to Malaysia’s delicate multicultural harmony.


​He is also seen as a close comrade of another equally controversial and fiery freelance preacher, Zamri Vinoth.

​Firdaus (centre) flanked by Zamri and activist Tamrin, standing in solidarity with Gerakan Anti Rumah Anutan Haram (GARAH). ​(Image Credit: Sinar Harian)



Unsurprisingly,​ Firdaus is a strong supporter of the “anti-illegal houses of worship” movement, which has been framed as a campaign to uphold the law against illegal land encroachment in the country. This has thrust various long-standing Hindu temples and shrines around the country into public scrutiny.


​​Understandably though, what some well-meaning people may ask is this: Why must preachers, in general, be actively involved in highly sensitive issues involving the houses of worship of other religions?



Shouldn't preachers stick to matters relating to their own religion?


​Anyway, even if a structure is illegal in the eyes of the law, is it not the responsibility of local councils and relevant government agencies to take appropriate action?


Sadly, these land encroachment disputes have morphed into explosive communal flashpoints that have further polarised the society here.


​Firdaus had also previously sparked a legal storm over the conversion of minors to Islam, where he was taken to court by distraught non-Muslim parents following allegations regarding videos on covert conversions.



​The Kuala Lumpur High Court subsequently declared the videos on the secret religious conversion of underage children as unlawful and unconstitutional.

Infringement on parental rights? Source: Malaysiakini


​​Still, perhaps Firdaus’ biggest claim to fame remains his pivotal part in the infamous KK Mart "Allah" socks expose. This controversy created such a furore that it threatened to disrupt public harmony across the country.


​In fact, it deeply divided the nation after firebrand UMNO Youth chief Akmal Saleh led the call to boycott the convenience store chain's outlets nationwide—all despite the owners having already publicly apologized for their negligence.



The thing is, such controversies are bound to compel some to ask: in a general sense, shouldn't influential religious preachers be promoting peaceful coexistence, tolerance, and mutual respect among the diverse communities in the land?


Furthermore, with their massive social media followings, shouldn't they be leveraging their influence for nation-building and forging unity?


Religious leaders are supposed to spread positivity, not enmity


In fact, many may wonder: what sort of signal would it send to the rakyat if prominent public figures who represent divine values frequently find themselves embroiled in legal wrangles outside their spiritual domain?



​Coming back to Ganabatirau’s lawsuit, the popular preacher has been dragged to court—not for the first time—over alleged insinuations that questioned the DAP MP’s allegiance to this nation.


​Here, it must be stressed that only the court can decide whether the accused has committed an offence or not. Until proven guilty, the person is presumed innocent.


Ultimately though, just as politics is about perception—is it not the same with religion, where preachers are judged by the perceptions they themselves create?






Main information source: NST.


(Legal disclaimer: All statements regarding the said lawsuit are based on court filings and media reports. As such, all parties are presumed innocent until proven otherwise in a court of law.)

Congrats, KL is now the haziest city in the world!

Malaysia's #1 Content Aggregator


Congrats, KL is now the haziest city in the world!

12 Oct 2026 • 9:30 AM MYT

C Chai
Science graduate with a career in marketing. Enjoys making gifts

Photo Credit: C Chai


You'd think I was joking when I say this, but genuinely, I'm not.

Every Malaysian knows that the haze as been EXTREMELY bad these past week. Firstly from the fact that we can't see far beyond the building next to us, and secondly from the way your nose and throat is SCREAMING at you to stay indoors the moment you step out the door.



But for those working in corporate, sorry lah. You still need to go to work.


Anyways, as much as we Malaysians cope with the haze by making jokes about it - it's not that funny when Malaysia was actually, recently ranked the haziest city in the world at one point of time.


According to IQAir's live World Air Quality (AQI) Ranking, KL “achieved” an AQI of 211 last Wednesday morning, on 7 October. Not only does this put our air quality in the “Very Unhealthy” (AQI readings >200) category, but we also topped the list as the world's #1 most polluted city - or instead, the world's haziest city, during that morning.

Photo Credit: IQAir

Trailing in #2 and #3 behind us is Dhaka, Bangladesh, followed by Jakarta, Indonesia. Dhaka's recorded AQI was 182, 29 points behind KL - which means that the air pollution in KL is leagues ahead in front of the rest of the world!



Other than KL & Jakarta, our friendly neighbor Singapore also made an appearance at #5 with an AQI of 166, alongside Ho Chi Minh City (#8) and Hanoi (#9) in Vietnam.


Slightly missing the list, is a fellow Malaysian city from the East - Kuching ranked #11th with an AQI of 138.


So while the haze is already bad at everyone's end, perhaps it's even worse at ours - and with the haze being expected to continue until February 2027 (which is a total of 5 months!), Malaysians are adviced to keep face masks on whenever you need to step out of home, drink lots of water to stay hydrated and seek medical support whenever required.


***

Terimakasih Bapak Bapak 😡😡😡

The 25-Year War on Afghanistan Hasn’t Ended

Consortium News
Volume 31, Number 279 — Saturday, October 10, 2026


The 25-Year War on Afghanistan Hasn’t Ended


The U.S. bombing campaign inaugurated a terrible new global order in which armed drones kill civilians who are neither named nor counted, writes Emran Feroz

An MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle taxis down a runway in Afghanistan, circa 2008. (U.S. Air Force, Brian Ferguson)

By Emran Feroz
Truthout

“There were nights full of terror. Our village was bombed constantly,” says Zalmay Khan. Afterwards, he goes to pray. Because of his wounds, he cannot kneel, so he prays sitting down.

Khan is in his early 20s and now works as a Taliban intelligence officer. As a boy, he says, he learned to read the sky before he learned to read words. His village in Wardak province, near Kabul, was bombed, then bombed again. First came American planes, then NATO’s, then those of the Afghan army the West had built. By night it got worse, when jets and armed foreign contractors hit villages and killed civilians seemingly at random.

“I became a Mujahed [a Taliban fighter] naturally,” Khan tells me.

He is not an outlier. In village after village on my most recent trip to Afghanistan a few weeks ago, I met men who grew up as the so-called war on terror’s raw material. Some wear the Taliban’s turbans, and some do not. Almost all of them say the same thing, with remarkable calm: The American narrative of this war belongs to the past. After two decades of war and destruction, it is their turn to control narratives and to rule the country.

Oct. 7, 2026, marked exactly 25 years since the United States began bombing Afghanistan. The anniversary passed in Washington with little reflection. In Afghanistan, the reality of it is lived daily.


Drones & Ghosts

An RQ-1L Predator drone of the U.S. Air Force at a base in Afghanistan, Feb 14, 2002. (U.S. Navy /Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)


The war on terror made history in a way few people remember. In its opening weeks, the United States used an armed drone against a target in Afghanistan, one of the first such attacks ever, in an attempt to kill the Taliban’s founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in Kandahar. Omar was not hit on Oct. 7, 2001. He survived and reportedly died of natural causes a decade later, which the Taliban kept secret for years.

Who died instead? The record offers almost nothing: no definitive or officially confirmed names, ages, villages. One news report cites unnamed Kandahar residents suggesting the raid killed Omar’s 10-year-old son and the child’s stepfather, but the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan declined to confirm or deny this report.

In other words, the first known attempt to kill a man with an armed drone killed people no one has ever definitively identified, and it set the template for the type of warfare that would dominate over the next decades. No one can say who the victims were. But if the pattern of the following years is any guide, many were likely civilians, like the thousands of victims who came after them. During the Obama years, Afghanistan officially became the world’s most drone-bombed country.

That template repeated itself so often that Afghans developed names for the many men who were declared dead after supposed “surgical strikes,” but who then reappeared alive: mord-e zinda (the living dead) in Farsi and khyali marr (the not truly dead) in Pashto. I call them “Taliban ghosts.”

It continued across successive U.S. administrations, even across the bureaucratic, supposedly methodical “kill lists” infamously used by the Obama administration to mark people for death from the skies.

The obvious question was almost never asked: If Omar was not the victim, who was killed instead? In the logic of the drone war, a body is a statistic, and a body in a targeted area becomes a militant by default. The dead were not counted, and the stories of their families, who were left to count for themselves, largely continued to go unknown.

Strikes did not only create ghosts. They also created recruits. Researchers, journalists and Afghan elders have long described the same pattern: A village is hit, a family is destroyed and the Taliban offer the survivors the only form of justice made available to them. By the end of the war, entire districts had made that choice, not out of ideological conviction but out of grief.


Democratic Torture

Aerial view of a new Bagram Detention Facility during its completion in 2009. (Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

One of the people I talked to on my recent trip was a Taliban official who had been held at Bagram, the American prison north of Kabul, for several years. He told me what the Americans wanted from him. “Accept our democracy or get tortured and rot here. That’s what they told me,” he recalled.

The aim, as he described it, was reeducation by coercion: Accept our system, our ideology and the pain stops. He refused. By his account, he left more committed than when he arrived. He was freed in 2020 under the prisoner exchange the United States negotiated with the Taliban, part of the same Doha process that handed the country back to the movement the war was purportedly meant to destroy.

U.S. representative Zalmay Khalilzad (left) meeting with Taliban leaders, Abdul Ghani Baradar, Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, Sheila Shaheen, unidentified; Doha, Qatar, Nov. 21, 2020. (U.S. State Department)

Consider the sequence. A man is imprisoned and tortured to make him embrace a political order. He then walks out of the prison and eventually helps govern. The war’s own methods created much of its failure.

I make no argument here that the Taliban’s rule is benign. Women and girls have been shut out of education and public life, and dissent is severely punished. These facts belong in any honest account. But an honest account also includes what the war did, who did it, and whom they harmed; the powers that waged it have shown little interest in reckoning with that part.

A War Passed On

Here is the part that does not fit the story that the war on terror ended in August 2021: someone else is still fighting it.

Pakistan is currently bombing Afghanistan. Just a few days ago, Pakistani airstrikes killed at least 10 civilians, most of them children, in the provinces of Helmand and Kunar.

Pakistani authorities say they are targeting militants of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, often known as the Pakistani Taliban. Afghans on the ground, and independent reports, repeatedly describe civilians as being among the dead. Islamabad has also forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans, many of them born there, out of Pakistan.

The phrasing used to justify these attacks is familiar: “Terrorists were eliminated.” Anyone who covered the American war has heard that sentence before, and the same pattern follows. The claims are hard to verify, the dead are hard to identify, and the people left behind are not asked.

Pakistan has run this game before, and it has historically done well for itself out of it. In the first days of the war on terror, Islamabad aligned itself with Washington while, according to critics and many former officials, hedging its bets with the Taliban. The United States poured billions into Pakistan in military aid and reimbursements. A double game paid for itself.

Pakistani soldier overlooking the Swat Valley during a military operation against Taliban fighters in the country’s northwest, May 22, 2009. (Al Jazeera English /Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 2.0)


For a military establishment that benefits from a war to fight, an enemy is an asset. That helps explain why the army has so little tolerance for those who challenge its role. This pattern goes beyond the foreign policy of one country alone. It is a system — one created by the U.S. but now adopted globally — that requires a threat to warrant its continued expansion and removes the people who question its logic.

If Pakistan again needs an Afghan threat to justify its budgets, its alliances, and its hold on power at home, the logic is the same as in 2001. The war on terror, seen from Islamabad, is a renewable resource.


The Violence That Made the TTP



Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2008. (World Economic Forum /Remy Steinegger/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 2.0)

The TTP itself is not a mystery. It did not appear from nowhere, and it cannot be blamed on Kabul alone. It grew out of Pakistan’s own tribal areas, where decades of military operations, drone strikes with Islamabad’s tacit consent, and brutality under former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf shattered communities. Many of these massacres have been forgotten outside the region. In the tribal belt they are not.

The result was a generation radicalized by state violence, in much the same process I heard described in Afghan villages. The TTP is, in significant part, a product of the very policies now used to justify the continued bombing of Afghanistan. Without Pakistan’s violence in the tribal areas, the group would not look as it does. Accountability for that history will not come from the same army that carried it out.

The war on terror in Afghanistan was sold as a campaign against a specific enemy. What it produced was a country scarred by airstrikes, night raids and detention, and an enemy that outlasted the world’s strongest military. It also produced a new precedent: That a state can kill from the sky, in secret, and rarely be asked who died, much less held accountable for its deathmaking.

[See: Tracking CIA-Backed ‘Zero Units’ in Afghanistan]

That precedent traveled. Drones have gone from being an innovation in killing, one shrouded in secrecy, to a mainstay of battlefields on multiple continents.. The language of “surgical” strikes and “militants eliminated” has become standard, notably throughout the genocide in Gaza. And in Afghanistan, the war continues in new hands, with the same justifications and the same result.

Meanwhile, the lessons of the war are available to anyone who asks the people who lived under the sky, and the most critical question is still the one nobody answered in 2001: Who was killed instead?

Emran Feroz is an Afghan-Austrian journalist, writer and activist currently based in Germany. He is the founder of Drone Memorial, a virtual memorial for civilian drone strike victims.

This article is from Truthout.

 

Over 80 American Aircraft Destroyed or Damaged in War with Iran

Military Watch Magazine Editorial Staff

October-11th-2026

U.S. Air Force F-15E Crashing Near the Kuwaiti-Iraqi Border After Shootdown

A report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) has identified at least 81 American military aircraft reportedly lost or damaged during the American-led war effort against Iran since February 28. This includes 12 F-15E Strike Eagle fighters, seven KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refuelling aircraft and at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones. The report draws on media accounts, statements from the Department of Defense and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), and findings published by the Pentagon’s Inspector General. It provides an expanded accounting of the damage sustained by American aviation during the conflict, although the CRS cautions that its figures remain subject to revision and that some damaged aircraft may already have returned to service.

Second U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopter Crashing Over Iran in Early April

The reports stressed that uncertainties surrounding classified incidents, continuing military operations and the attribution of individual losses could affect the final tally. An earlier version of the report, published in May, listed 42 aircraft, with the increase reflecting the incorporation of additional incidents and new information rather than necessarily representing losses sustained entirely since that earlier assessment. The F-15E Strike Eagle accounts for 12 aircraft in the report. Three were destroyed over Kuwait on March 2, with Iraqi militias reported to have shot it down, while U.S. reports first indicated Kuwaiti Patriot air defences, and then a Kuwaiti F-18, were responsible as part of a friendly fire incident. Another was shot down over Iran on April 5. The remaining eight sustained damage during an Iranian strike on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan on September 9–10.

Moments of Iranian Air Defences’ Strike on U.S. F-35 in March 2026

U.S. aircraft suffered their highest rate of combat losses following the shootdown of a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle long range fighter over Iranian territory in early April. U.S. efforts to recover the two airmen that ejected and parachuted into Iran resulted in losses of nine more U.S. aircraft and one Israeli aircraft. These included HC-130J Combat King II personnel recovery support aircraft, HH-60W combat rescue helicopters, UH-60 Black Hawk transport helicopters, an A-10 attack jet and an MQ-9 drone. Iranian air defences had preceding this achieved the first ever confirmed missile hit on a flying fifth generation fighter, a U.S. Air Force F-35A, on March 19, which damaged the aircraft sufficiently to cause shrapnel wounds to the pilot. It remains uncertain whether the aircraft was considered damaged or destroyed.

Shootdown and Wreckage of Reaper Drones Separately Destroyed Over Iran

Unmanned aircraft account for the largest share of the total. The CRS lists at least 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones, three MQ-1 unmanned aircraft and one MQ-4C Triton. The Triton is by some estimates the highest value aircraft destroyed, with each costing over $200 million. The concentration of losses among unmanned aircraft reflects their extensive use in surveillance and operational missions, including in the case of the MQ-9 for higher risk operations. The extreme levels of attrition the fleet has suffered has raised serious questions regarding the U.S. Armed Forces’ ability to sustain a higher intensity war effort. Despite the considerable cost of the aircraft damaged and destroyed, other parts of the war effort have been far more costly, most notably the costs of replacing expended missiles, including both anti-ballistic missile interceptors, and cruise and ballistic missiles.