Vice greater than 7 Deadly Sins?

The Christians have their 'Seven Deadly Sins', while the Jews find theirs in the Mishlai (Book of Proverbs) where Solomon taught that "six things the Lord hateth, and the seventh His soul detesteth."

And do you know the seventh that God detesteth?

It’s “Him that soweth discord among brethren” wakakaka.

Throughout the Bible, the sins are repetitively mentioned, though strangely, in this atheist’s opinion, there was no embarrassment by Solomon, or more correctly the compiler of the Bible, when he named the 2nd sin as “a lying tongue” wakakaka.

Anyway, rather than talk about the religious-listed sins, let’s consider vices (of a personal nature and not religious sins) though I read that in Islam, Ibn abi Dunya, a 9th-century scholar and tutor to the caliphs, described seven vices as worldliness, ire, envy, slander (wakakaka, obviously this teaching hasn’t reached Malaysia yet), obscenity (kaytee smirking), intoxicants and instruments of pleasure.

Buddhism names as vices the absence of shame (wakakaka, reminds me of someone), absence of embarrassment (please stop it Lord Buddha, I’m collapsing from laughter, wakakaka), jealousy, anger, concealment of wrongs and particularly for Buddists, a range of unnecessary emotions - am still giggling helplessly which being an emotion perhaps may be considered as a vice for Buddhists, wakakaka.

But from a secular perspective, what would be ‘vice’, which is the subject of my post?

The dictionary defines it as ‘an immoral or evil habit or practice’.

I propose to omit the utter evil of pedophilia from the list as it is more than a vice; it’s a f* evil crime which we all must, as far as we possibly can, smash, obliterate and annihilate, where no quarters should ever be given.

Traditionally, we consider vices as drinking - principally of alcohol though I would not recommend taking too much fizzy drinks wakakaka but I reckon we can include in this group the taking of harmful drugs such as opium in earlier days to the current heroin, etc - womanizing and gambling. Modern awareness has also included unacceptable stuff like pornography as a vice.


My personal take from observations and experience is that the worst of the lot is … yes, gambling.

I’ve seen families broken up in utter tragedies because of a member's uncontrollable addiction to gambling, of how mothers cried as their addicted sons and daughters gambled away the family assets like savings, houses, and in some countries, reportedly even wives and children.

Drinking, drugs taking, womanizing, etc – they’re bad of course but the terrible consequences of gambling is deep seated and far far more reaching than a drug addict (including an alcoholic) finally succumbing to his/her own addiction.

Thus I would avoid gambling because of its unmitigated risk taking, more so as the high risk taking of gambling seems to be associated with the Chinese more than other races.

By stating this I’m not a Chinese self-hater like a man who frequently reminds everyone who cares to listen he’s a Melayu wakakaka. I’m quoting from an interesting book by Dr Desmond Lam titled The World of Chinese Gambling (2009), where he identified Chinese as the ethnic group with the highest risk-seeking behaviour in gambling.

Two years ago (in happier ‘Mediterranean climes’ wakakaka) I wrote A disease deadlier than AIDS for the Centre of Policy Initiatives (CPI) about the lethality of the gambling disease ...


... which brings me to the core question of Malaysia-Today’s post on Mahathir's Disastrous Financial Speculation.

Financial speculation is without any iota of doubt just gambling, not unlike punting on Empat Ekor or speculating on shares. We know or have heard of housewives, maid servants (especially in Hong Kong) and many others playing the stock and futures markets, many to their financial doom with some even committing suicide.

But when a PM of a country put the nation’s resources on the world's financial table, not unlike a Chinaman staking his money in a game of baccarat in Macau or blackjack in Genting Highlands and Singapore, we are not talking about mere thousands or even millions.


RPK’s post quoted The Asia Sentinel report that: ... Malaysia’s central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia, at the urging of then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, began speculating aggressively in global foreign exchange markets, at one time running up exposure rumoured to be in the region of RM270 billion -- three times the country’s gross domestic product and more than five times its foreign reserves at the time.

RM270 billion! My knees feel f* weak at the thought of that sum.

Didn’t Dr M know it was gambling? Could it be, impossible as it sounds, he has some secret drops of Chinese (gambling) blood in his heritage, to indulge in such risk taking?


In his book, Dr Desmond Lau states that, among many factors contributing to the gambling problems of the Chinese, their superstitious beliefs represent a major influence and consequently, their unwarranted conviction that they could exercise control over the gambling outcomes.

We all too often see this pattern of behaviour in our local Chinese seeking divine or supernatural help from every nook, crook and corner for, what Penangites would term as, chun-chun see ay jee (the correct 4 numbers) for a win.

So, was Dr M similarly equally superstitious to possess such ‘unwarranted conviction’ that he could exercise control over the financial speculation (gambling) outcomes?

The Asia Sentinel continued: Mahathir and Bank Negara ..... walked away with a US$4 billion loss, followed by another US$2.2 billion loss in 1993, the total equivalent of RM15.5 billion.

Although the disastrous trades destroyed the entire capital base of Bank Negara, after first denying it had taken place, the then-Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim repeatedly reassured parliament that the losses were only “paper losses” and, now that he is Opposition Leader and head of the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition, has managed to skate free of the controversy.

Remember, it was Lim Kit Siang (not kaytee) who raised this issue of Anwar Ibrahim’s involvement and misleading of Parliament.

Eventually, the Finance Ministry had to recapitalize the central bank, almost unheard of for any government anywhere. It is reliably estimated that Bank Negara lost as much as US$30 billion in this and other disastrous currency trades, costing the head of the central bank and his currency trader deputy their jobs.

Lost US$30 billion!


And we haven’t even touched other issues like Maminco, MAS, etc yet.

And today Dr M has the bloody cheek to preach to us on matters economic, social and financial.