A photographer captured shockwaves rippling through the air and the smoke as the gigantic SpaceX Starship blasted off during a test run last week.

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History, it is said, does not repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes. This may explain the sense of déjà vu that crept over me when I read about the case of Mr Raymond Wong – a 55-year-old construction worker, not the former newsman of the same name – who appeared at the West Kowloon Magistrates Court a couple of weeks ago.

The charge against Mr Wong was that he had on two occasions thrown home-produced leaflets, or in legal language “paper sheets written with statements,” from the vicinity of his 12th-floor public housing flat into the public area of the estate.

The first time, many of them were picked up by an irate district councillor, on the second by a staff member of the estate’s management. Quite how this led to Mr Wong was not explained in court but police eventually discovered his fingerprints on two of the offending items.

Mr Wong was then charged with violating the local national security law, on the grounds that the words on the leaflets were seditious. The first batch called for action against corrupt police people, which I suppose is automatically seditious because it implies that there are corrupt police people, which – of course – is not true.

The second batch of leaflets included the phrase “liberate Hong Kong; do not vote.” Curiously Mr Wong was not charged with discouraging voters, though that is an offence. Worse, we may suppose, was the fatal phrase “liberate Hong Kong,” when – as we all know – the law presumes that Hong Kong is already as liberated as it wishes to be.

Mr Wong sensibly pleaded guilty and will be sentenced later next week.

Meanwhile, I was haunted by the thought that scattering subversive leaflets into public places had come up somewhere before. And after some searching I found it in Geert Mak’s book, “In Europe.” Mr Mak was assigned by the Dutch newspaper he worked for to spend a year touring Europe while also touring the continent’s 20th century history. The resulting pieces were published as they were written in the newspaper, and assembled into the book, which is excellent though now a bit dated, afterwards.

So, in due course, Mr Mak reached Munich, a city with a complete set of capital city kit because it used to be the home of the Kings of Bavaria. One of them lent his name to the local university, the Ludwig-Maximilian Universität. Apparently this is a rather bombastic piece of architecture.

Let me now hand the microphone to Mr Mak:

“Here at the university is where it all converges: the pompous stairways, the pseudo-Roman statues beside them (in reality, two Bavarian kings in costume), the stupendous dome covering the hall, but also the wispy innocent desperate little pamphlets that the students Hans and Sophie Scholl let flutter down from the galleries here on 18 February 1943 ‘In the name of Germany’s young people we demand restitution by Adolf Hitler’s state of our personal freedom …’. They had spread tracts and left behind graffiti on earlier occasions as well: ‘Freedom’, ‘Down with Hitler.’ That was all the White Rose did. This time, though, they were caught by the caretaker and turned over to the Gestapo. Four days later they were beheaded.”

Now, nothing like that could happen here. We do not conclude national security cases in four days. We take four years, which may or may not be an improvement but is certainly different. We do not do capital punishment.

We do not have to worry about our personal freedom, at least as long as we refrain from daring stuff like appearing in the vicinity of Victoria Park with a piece of red string or an inflated question mark.

Still, it should not be a matter of rejoicing that we have joined the club of countries where the channels of public communication have been so choked by fear and restrictions that citizens who wish to express their views are reduced to scattering anonymous leaflets.

Our government seems to have inherited the thin skin of our notoriously sensitive police force. Now even legislators – carefully vetted patriots to a man or woman – are complaining that any comment on government policy which falls short of a rousing endorsement is branded as dishonesty or worse by official spokespersons.

No doubt government policies are usually well chosen and efficiently implemented. Still, our leaders should perhaps take a word of advice from Oliver Cromwell, who famously wrote to one set of obstinate opponents: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

Before You Touch Your Marketing, Do This First written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Most founders come to a marketing conversation with a tactic already in mind.

Better website. More leads. A LinkedIn strategy. Maybe an AI tool that’ll finally make content easy. The tactic changes. The assumption underneath it doesn’t: the marketing needs to change.

After 20 years doing this work with small businesses, here’s what I’ve actually seen. The marketing is rarely the first thing that needs to change. The founder’s clarity is.

Not because anything is wrong with the founder. Most of the founders who ask for marketing help are working hard and carrying a lot. The problem isn’t effort. It’s that they’ve lost the ability to see their own business clearly.

Why that happens

Five years in. Ten years in. You’ve absorbed a hundred opinions about what your business should be, and somewhere along the way you drifted from what it actually is.

You’re making decisions based on the business you remember, or the one you wish you had. Every new strategy you install inherits that confusion.

I watched a founder last year build out a full content strategy, hire a new agency, and rewrite their website. Same results they’d been getting for 3 years. The strategy was fine. The clarity underneath it wasn’t there.

The Founder Portrait: 4 questions most founders avoid

Before you touch strategy, before you change anything about your marketing, do this. One hour. A blank page. Four questions.

What’s actually working right now, and how do I know?

Not what you’re doing. What’s working. There’s a difference, and most founders can’t answer it with specifics.

“Working” has a real definition: it produces revenue, a measurable input to revenue, or it reduces what you’re spending to acquire revenue. Everything else is activity. If you can’t name what’s working and point to the evidence, that’s a starting point.

What am I doing out of habit, guilt, or optimism that I should stop?

Every business carries weight it doesn’t need. A service line that never quite worked. A customer segment that costs more than it pays. A channel somebody told you to be on 3 years ago.

The honest answer is almost always 3 to 5 specific things. Naming them is the hard part. Stopping them is what creates room for real growth.

Where is my business actually making money, and where am I pretending it does?

This one requires looking at revenue by segment, by service, by customer, with gross margin attached. Most founders have a story about their business that’s drifted from the numbers. The numbers don’t drift.

I’ve seen this pattern enough times that I look for it now. The founder thinks they run a 3-service-line firm. The numbers say they run a single-service-line firm with 2 expensive hobbies attached.

Who am I as a founder, and what do I want this business to give me?

This is the question most marketing work completely skips. Growth is one possible goal. Some founders want a business that supports a specific life. Some want an exit. And those are different businesses with entirely different marketing systems.

If you don’t know which one you’re building, no strategy can serve you. It’ll always optimize toward the wrong target.

What the Founder Portrait actually does

These 4 questions together produce what I call the Founder Portrait. It’s not a document you share or hand off. It’s the ground you stand on when you do the strategic work that comes next.

Without it, every downstream decision is made from an unstable position. The messaging, the ideal client definition, the channels, the campaigns: all of it inherits whatever you were confused about when you built it.

You can only build a system on what you actually know. The Founder Portrait is how you find out.

One thing to do this week

Sit down for one hour with a blank page and answer the 4 questions. No team. No advisors. No AI. Just you and the page.

Don’t try to turn the answers into a plan yet. The work this week is to see the business clearly. Everything else comes after that.

The Founder Portrait is the starting point. The rest of the system is what comes next. I’ve put the complete framework in a new ebook: “7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success.” It covers everything from defining your ideal client to building a referral engine that actually runs. Grab it at dtm.world/7steps.

TOKYO, June 7 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim will undertake an official visit to Japan from June 8 to 10 at the invitation of the Japanese government, according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

He will be accompanied by Foreign Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan, Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani, Entrepreneur and Cooperatives Development Minister Steven Sim Chee Keong and senior government officials.

“The Prime Minister will be accorded an official welcoming ceremony, followed by a bilateral meeting with his counterpart, Prime Minister of Japan Sanae Takaichi,” the ministry, widely known as Wisma Putra, said in a statement today.

According to the ministry, the meeting will provide a pivotal opportunity for both leaders to review progress in bilateral relations and chart new avenues for cooperation following the elevation of Malaysia-Japan ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in December 2023.

Key areas of discussion are expected to include green technology, energy resilience and transition, environmental cooperation, defence and regional security, as well as higher education.

The two leaders will also exchange views on regional and international issues of mutual interest, the statement said.

During the visit, Anwar is scheduled to deliver a special lecture at Tokyo University and a keynote address at the 31st Nikkei Forum: Future of Asia, underscoring Malaysia’s commitment to strengthening ties and fostering dialogue with Japan and the wider region.

Recognising Japan’s enduring role as a major source of foreign direct investment and a key economic partner, Anwar will also participate in business roundtable sessions with Japanese industry leaders to explore new high-value investment opportunities in Malaysia.

Japan has remained one of Malaysia’s most important economic partners, ranking as the country’s fifth-largest trading partner globally since 2024.

In 2025, total bilateral trade amounted to RM142.96 billion (US$33.39 billion).

As of December 2025, a total of 2,872 manufacturing projects involving Japanese participation had been implemented in Malaysia, with investments reaching RM107.9 billion (US$31 billion).

According to Wisma Putra, these projects have generated 347,346 jobs. — Bernama

KUCHING, June 10 — Matang Vocational College has brought pride to Sarawak and Malaysia after its robotics team secured a runner-up finish at an international robotics competition held in Taiwan recently.

The team won the Finalist Alliance Award in the League of Mecha-Clash (LOM) category at the STVE x MARC Open Championship 2026, held at the National Taiwan Science Education Centre in Taipei from May 30 to 31.

The championship attracted top robotics teams from various countries, providing a platform for participants to demonsrate their expertise in robot design, programming, engineering and strategic problem-solving.

KVM impressed judges and spectators throughout the competition, advancing to the final round before clinching second place in the alliance-based category.

The League of Mecha-Clash challenges teams to design and operate robots capable of completing tasks through both autonomous operations and manual control in a highly competitive environment.

Success in the category depends not only on the technical capabilities of the robots but also on teamwork, communication and effective collaboration among alliance partners.

KVM said the achievement reflects the dedication, hard work and perseverance of its students and mentors throughout the preparation and competition period.

The accomplishment also highlights the ability of Malaysian Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) students to compete successfully on the international stage while showcasing advanced skills in robotics and emerging technologies.

Organised by the Master AI Robot Cup (MARC), the STVE x MARC Open Championship promotes the application of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), artificial intelligence (AI), programming and engineering through real-world competition.

The college also expressed appreciation to all parties who supported the team’s participation in the championship.

It hopes the international recognition will inspire more students to pursue excellence in TVET education, particularly in robotics, automation and emerging technologies. — The Borneo Post 

Prime minister announces ban, saying social media is making children unhappy and unsafe

• Social media to be banned in UK for under-16s, Starmer announces

Starmer acknowledges some teenagers will get round these restrictons. But that does not make the rules pointless, he says.

Will it mean that no child ever looks at social media again? No.

But look, this might shock you, but it doesn’t shock parents of teenagers; they get around other laws too.

Some technology companies want us to think that social media is unchangeable, part of an almost natural order.

But we have to resist that kind of learned helplessness. We have agency, we can change it, and we will.

At a friend’s cottage I recently uncovered a copy of The Reptiles of Ontario published in 1939 by the Royal Ontario Museum of Zoology. It’s an artifact that thrills with the mention of the extraordinary nature once found near human settlement.

It says that, in 1877, a timber rattlesnake, a species now extirpated from Ontario, was discovered a mile from Niagara Falls and even into the late 1930s this large snake—which can be five feet or longer—was found at Niagara Glen.

The spiny soft-shelled turtle, now endangered, once occurred in Hamilton Bay. The spotted turtle, also endangered, was in the 1930s common around Lake Erie. The eastern hog-nosed snake, currently threatened, was in 1907 found in Toronto.

The book’s most uplifting section is devoted to the Massasauga rattlesnake. The author, E.B.S. Logier, offers it a measure of empathy. In fact, he hints that it has intrinsic value.

This is extraordinary given that it’s long been reviled in the province. From the time of early settlement on, many considered it dangerous. Elizabeth Simcoe, wife of the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, wrote in her diary in the 1790s that 700 rattlesnakes were killed during the building of a mill on the Humber River.

Logier laments that the creature is rarely seen and adds, “There will be multitudes of serious-minded people in the generations yet to come who will wish to see and study rattlesnakes…so there is a responsibility incumbent on us who are living today, and who by the very nature of the case are trustees of an estate to be passed on, not to wantonly destroy any living thing, regardless of whether from our point of view it is a desirable creature or not.”

Logier says we should protect rattlers because it would benefit humans: future Ontarians may want to experience them. But by urging their preservation even if they aren’t desirable ‘from our point of view’ he also suggests wildlife has inherent worth. It’s his use of ‘our point of view’ — coming decades before the modern environmental movement — that’s impressive here.

Further, in calling us “trustees of an estate”, he implies our job is not to exploit the natural world but to safeguard it. This echoes the message and conservation work of Ontario Nature, which reminds us that the environment is entrusted to us for future generations, not as something to own, but as something to steward.

Logier isn’t ready to grant the Massasauga constitutional rights (what might be called “security of the serpent”), but he’s gesturing in that direction.

And given he was writing 87 years ago, that’s admirable.

Ex-defence secretary John Healey and ex-defence minister Al Carns have given resignation statements to MPs

Speaking to reporters at the G7, Keir Starmer also defended the defence investment plan (DIP) draft that led to John Healey’s resignation as defence secretary last week. Starmer confirmed that Dan Jarvis, the new defence secretary, is getting some input before the publication of the DIP in its final version.

Starmer said:

The position on investment in defence is firstly that we increased last year defence spending from 2.3% to 2.6%, that’s the biggest increase since the 1980s, and that means £270bn will be spent this parliament on defence.

On top of that [the] defence investment plan which obviously gives us capability for the future. We will put even more money in relation to that. I’ve been really clear that’s required difficult decisions, I have taken the decision to reallocate money from other departments.