Richard Wan and the TRE are facing the heat of legal suits for defamation. Public apologies have been made and whether further demands or legal proceedings will follow are yet to be seen. The furious onslaught of lawsuits has put a dampener on the mood of bloggers and struck fear in some. The hundred flowers bloomed is taking its toll and some bloggers are making a retreat for a while.
The call for more propriety and care in allowing postings and comments to go through without censorship comes into question. The site or blog owners are accountable for what is being posted. There are counter arguments about the amount of control available and possible due to the nature of blogging and posting in cyberspace and how much blame can be put onto the owners.
In redbeanforum.com I was faced with several hundreds of pornographic posts and hate posts every morning when I turned it on. Initially I tried dutifully to delete them one by one. But the flood of unsavoury articles were just too much and demanding great effort on my part to vet them and delete them. My ultimate solution was to ban all postings altogether in the forum. It is now a read only forum except for a few blogger friends that I know.
Mysingaporenews also has its attacks daily. Fortunately Bloggers have quite an effective system to screen out the outright vulgar contents instantly. The other great thing about mysingaporenews is the restraint and maturity of the bloggers here. I have very little need to do any censorship. But that does not mean that all is fine. I tried my best to allow freedom of expression even with personal attacks against me or to other individuals as long as they are bearable. Anyone feel offended can notify me and I will delete the offensive stuff. I had a request once to remove an offensive thread for personal attack and it was done and the matter closed.
The danger of cyberspace and social media is that there are all kinds of bloggers with all kinds of agenda. There are the saboteurs, provocateurs, the internet brigade, the terrorists, the paid instigators, the moles and whatever that can do damage to a blog or site or its owners. Some may be dragged into trouble if they are not careful and thinking that the bloggers are just innocent complainants letting off steams. They could be planted there to do damage to the blogs and its owners. And it is very unjust when owners are prosecuted or taken to task when they were really fixed up without knowing what hit them. This is the ugly part about human conspiracy. The wicked became the innocent and the innocent became the victim.
I would like to thank all my bloggers here for their restraint and propriety in keeping this blog sane and respectable. The only exception is Matilah which we all understand is having some Tourette sickness problems and we can ignore his diatribes when he forget to take his pills. He will get back to his normal self very quickly.
I hope TRE will continue to exist as a social forum with more control of their material and not be dragged down for the wrong reasons. The internet can be a treacherous place if one is not careful. So please bear with me if I have to do some cleaning when necessary. So far I have done very little. Thanks to all of you.
2/25/2012
2/24/2012
Scholarship be given to anyone based on merit
‘http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/scholarships-based-merit-not-nationality-baey-152120978.html
No matter where a scholarship comes from, nationality should not factor into the decision of who receives it, says Member of Parliament (MP) for Tampines GRC Baey Yam Keng.
"Whether they are a GLC (government-linked company), the government or a private company, they all want good people to work for them," he told Yahoo! Singapore in an interview on Thursday.’
Would any country go around giving scholarship to anyone regardless of his nationality? Is this the road Singapore is taking, using taxpayer’s money to give scholarship to anyone from any country and not to its own citizens? Whose money, and who should decide how the money shall be spent, to the children of citizens or to the children of someone, somewhere far away, that have nothing to do with us?
How many of you think this is the way to go? To me, personally, is damn stupid. You don’t take the taxpayer’s money and throw it around the world. Is Singapore a charitable organisation, a church for the people of the world? Come one and all, we will pay for your education if you are talented. Our citizen’s children that are not talented do not deserve to be given scholarships.
We have thousands of students who are straight As and definitely deserving of scholarships unless their straight As are unworthy, useless or fake. That cannot be. Their straight As came from our world class education system. Now I have great doubts.
And they are not deserving but students from the far corners of the world are deserving. What talking cock!
Why are our thousands of straight A students undeserving of scholarships?
No matter where a scholarship comes from, nationality should not factor into the decision of who receives it, says Member of Parliament (MP) for Tampines GRC Baey Yam Keng.
"Whether they are a GLC (government-linked company), the government or a private company, they all want good people to work for them," he told Yahoo! Singapore in an interview on Thursday.’
Would any country go around giving scholarship to anyone regardless of his nationality? Is this the road Singapore is taking, using taxpayer’s money to give scholarship to anyone from any country and not to its own citizens? Whose money, and who should decide how the money shall be spent, to the children of citizens or to the children of someone, somewhere far away, that have nothing to do with us?
How many of you think this is the way to go? To me, personally, is damn stupid. You don’t take the taxpayer’s money and throw it around the world. Is Singapore a charitable organisation, a church for the people of the world? Come one and all, we will pay for your education if you are talented. Our citizen’s children that are not talented do not deserve to be given scholarships.
We have thousands of students who are straight As and definitely deserving of scholarships unless their straight As are unworthy, useless or fake. That cannot be. Their straight As came from our world class education system. Now I have great doubts.
And they are not deserving but students from the far corners of the world are deserving. What talking cock!
Why are our thousands of straight A students undeserving of scholarships?
Hundred flowers bloom
Remember this campaign in China? If I can remember correctly, this happened some time before the Cultural Revolution when there seemed to be a loosening up of govt control and the people were encouraged to speak freely. Freely they spoke, a bit too freely. Then the door was closed and all who spoke freely were rounded up in a dragnet. It was a clean sweep and all the dissidents, unhappy people and anti govt agitators were behind bars on sent to reeducation camps in the rural parts of China.
Free speech and freedom of expression have a price. It is free to speak, to express and attack people, but when done wrongly, unrestrained and without proof, spurious, defamatory, it can be like entering a mouse trap. A hundred flowers bloomed may end up with a hundred flowers doomed.
Don’t take your freedom too casually and for granted. One must know one’s place in society.
Free speech and freedom of expression have a price. It is free to speak, to express and attack people, but when done wrongly, unrestrained and without proof, spurious, defamatory, it can be like entering a mouse trap. A hundred flowers bloomed may end up with a hundred flowers doomed.
Don’t take your freedom too casually and for granted. One must know one’s place in society.
No automatic by election
After Professor Eugene Tan’s comment that by election is automatic as in the case of Hougang, Hri Kumar has written a reply today in Today paper saying that it is not so. Hri’s position is that the law and reason behind the law in our system is mainly to elect a govt, and the position of an MP is secondary. A vacant MP seat is acceptable as long as the govt is in place. There is no automatic by election or no need for by election if the PM or govt thinks so.
So if 5 seats were vacant, or to stretch the argument further, 20 seats were vacant, legally as provided by the law and the reason behind the law, if the govt is in place and running, there is no need for by election at all and the vacant seats can remain, and the people can suffer for having no MPs to serve them. It is the fault of the people for choosing a wrong MP who may resign, expel, die or committed a crime and force to quit while in office.
Hri added, ‘It has another salutary effect: It holds political parties accountable to voters for the performance of their candidates. Parties must endeavour to field candidates who can last the term as MP.’ So political parties must now play God to judge that their MPs would not get into any trouble and resign or prematurely die while in office. Would a doctor’s certificate be needed, like runners for marathon, to ensure that the MP is medically able to live through his terms? I am not God and I don’t think any doctor is God enough to issue such a certificate.
But is it the intent of our electoral system to just elect govt and MP can die or go away never mind? Is that specified in the law or is that an interpretation or a personal opinion? This is the first time that I have heard of such a view that is claimed to be the law and the reason behind the law. No need to have by election. Not automatic.
So if 5 seats were vacant, or to stretch the argument further, 20 seats were vacant, legally as provided by the law and the reason behind the law, if the govt is in place and running, there is no need for by election at all and the vacant seats can remain, and the people can suffer for having no MPs to serve them. It is the fault of the people for choosing a wrong MP who may resign, expel, die or committed a crime and force to quit while in office.
Hri added, ‘It has another salutary effect: It holds political parties accountable to voters for the performance of their candidates. Parties must endeavour to field candidates who can last the term as MP.’ So political parties must now play God to judge that their MPs would not get into any trouble and resign or prematurely die while in office. Would a doctor’s certificate be needed, like runners for marathon, to ensure that the MP is medically able to live through his terms? I am not God and I don’t think any doctor is God enough to issue such a certificate.
But is it the intent of our electoral system to just elect govt and MP can die or go away never mind? Is that specified in the law or is that an interpretation or a personal opinion? This is the first time that I have heard of such a view that is claimed to be the law and the reason behind the law. No need to have by election. Not automatic.
2/23/2012
Foreign scholars - Bad meat bad broth
A piece of bad meat in a broth will turn everything in the pot bad. The Sun Xu incident is gonna turn the batch of scholars around him feeling sour despite the scholarship and opportunities given to them for a good foreign education in a world class university in a world class country.
Sun Xu is unlikely to feel good about the experience. He has shown to be quite an ingrate to rubbish the people of a country over a few stares by a few rude oldies, probably the illiterate type. His close scholar friends would likely be rubbed the wrong way and feeling uncomfortable with the whole issue. And so would other scholars who empathize with his plight.
The broth and meat have to be thrown away, including the millions spent on the whole batch of scholars. One bad apple is enough to affect the whole basket of apples. What a waste of money.
Sun Xu is unlikely to feel good about the experience. He has shown to be quite an ingrate to rubbish the people of a country over a few stares by a few rude oldies, probably the illiterate type. His close scholar friends would likely be rubbed the wrong way and feeling uncomfortable with the whole issue. And so would other scholars who empathize with his plight.
The broth and meat have to be thrown away, including the millions spent on the whole batch of scholars. One bad apple is enough to affect the whole basket of apples. What a waste of money.
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