Is there still a need for NS?

‘Mr Lee(MM) goes on to say that the economy and defence are closely interlinked and “without a strong economy, there can be no strong defence. Without a strong defence, there will be no Singapore.’ Rajiv Chaudhry

I was thinking about this same issue when I read Rajiv Chaudhry’s article. Rethinking of Singapore’s Defence Needs. He came to the conclusion that Singapore was overspending on defence and also there was no need to defend Singapore for its wealth. He also repeated the point that Singapore was indefensible and thus it was all a futile attempt and a waste of valuable resources to build up a huge defence force.

My earlier view coincides with the establishment’s view, that it is necessary to build a capable and effective defence force to protect country, people and our sovereignty. My views have since changed with the new developments in our national policies. We used to have something to defend and die for, our country, our national wealth, our sovereignty, our way of life, the future of our children. All these are passé, no longer relevant in current context.

Our military is to defend the country from foreign aggression, preventing foreigners from coming in to occupy our land. This is irrelevant today when we open our doors to invite foreigners to live with us and help themselves with everything we got, and with the citizens having to compete against foreigners in a playing field that is tilted against the citizens. Why waste trying to defend something that is already given away? Why defend something that is no longer a right or a special privilege as a citizen?

What about our national wealth, our national reserves? Another illusion that is no longer of any meaning to the people. What national wealth? It is only hearsay, like our CPF savings, a statement to feel good but benefitting who? Who is being paid in the millions from our savings? Even our own savings in the CPF, in a sense, are no longer our savings. So what is there to defend when it is no longer yours?

Our national assets, strategic assets, land and properties, even islands, could possibly be put on sale when the price is right. Who knows, Sentosa will be on the auction table and going to the highest bidder one day. What is there to defend?

Our way of life is no longer to be treasured. It is being adulterated, diluted by the worst of the new immigrants. And with so many here, the call for integration of migrants to our way of life could be the reverse, the locals integrating into the migrant’s way of life.

The rationale for NS is no longer valid with the new circumstances and economic situation. Some may still remember that one of the reasons, other than defence, was the flood of employable young men and women coming of age. The British were withdrawing and the economy was still very backwards. There was a big problem of employment and a way must be found to delay these young people from entering the job market. NS could absorb and delay the males for two and a half years, taking the pressure off for a while.

What we are facing today is exactly the opposite. By keeping the men in NS, we are causing more shortages and strains in the supply of workers to the economy. There is no need to hold them back anymore, and rightly they should be released to the job market instead of crying father and mother that there are not enough workers available and we need to import more. When the need to defend the country is no longer there, no longer necessary, when everything can be sold, when foreigners are invited to share our wealth and our land, NS has outlived its usefulness and no longer needed. What is there to defend when there is nothing to defend? The only thing left worthy of defending for the average NS men will be their HDB flats and the wealth and properties of the rich, including foreigners. The foreigners need not pay or contribute to our defence. They got a free right at the expense of our NS men.

It is so strange that we have arrived at such a scenario as a nation, a country, when we are no longer a nation, a country, but a hotel. A hotel only needs to employ security guards like the Gurkhas. At best we are just a city state for citizens of the world.

Time to ask the NS men what do you think, or what are you defending?

The Briton and his victim, who is the racist?

When news of the Briton being bashed by his victim for racist slurs, I read some comments that the Briton is not racist because he married a local girl. Is that good enough a factor to clear him of the racist tag? Maybe indeed he is not a racist. Maybe he did not even know that he is a racist. Maybe racism is just part of him and is unrecognisable.

The fact is that this young Briton carried with him hundreds of years of European history and racism. These have probably be in his blood, in his history lessons in schools. How else would a young Briton told a Chink, anyway, to all westerns, Sinkies look no different than another Chinaman, the racist joke of being laundryman and asking him to go back to his laundry shop in China?

This racist discrimination of Chinaman and condemning them into lowly trade like cooks and laundry men, was enshrined in the American Constitution in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Other than tagging the native Red Indians as savages and good for the slaughter, and the enslavement of African human beast of burden, the Exclusion Act is the third most hideous crime against humanity committed by the Americans. Thank God Sinkie Chinks are not Chinaman and can laugh at this Act or simply ignored it as nothing to do with us. I take exceptions to this kind of denial.

Back to the Sinkie Chink that was taunted by the Briton. A commentator posted that the Briton was not racist because of his Chinese wife and it was his victim that played the racist card. So insulting him with the laundry tag on his expensive designer shirt was not racist. Calling him a laundry man was also not racist. Telling him to go back to his laundry shop in China was not racist. Now where did this Briton hide this part of Chinaman/laundryman in his memory for instant recall, to be used against Chinaman?

What did the victim did that was racist? For beating up the Briton for passing all the friendly and innocent laundry man remarks? Maybe the Sinkie Chink could not appreciate Brit humour, or got no sense of humour. Since the end of colonialism, not many former subjects of the Empire would want to appreciate deprecating racist humour from their colonial masters anymore.

How could someone called a Sinkie Chink racist when he spoke and dressed and behaved like a westerner and enjoying every bit of it in a western establishment, a pub. And if you read him carefully, he even called himself Alexander Lincoln despite his parents giving him a Chinese name. Or maybe the Alexander Lincoln was given to him by his parents too. Would this fact be enough to say that Alexander Lincoln is not racist, or at least his parents too were not racist as his name speaks of their aspiration to be more like angmoh?

In my view, if the Briton, Richard Jonathan Mills, would to invite him to his table, Alexander Lincoln could be so grateful for such an act that he would probably buy the Briton a drink to drink to that. The Brit was too full of himself and to me, deserved to be beaten by the Sinkie Chink for not knowing that his racist slur was no longer acceptable even to Sinkie Chinks who would not associate themselves with the term China man. It was double insult really. Sinkie Chinks despised China man and would not want to have anything to do with them. They might even agree and approve the Chinese Exclusion Act as something necessary and the right thing to do.

The frightening tags of the past

There was a time when the British tagged the nationalists as terrorists or insurgents to put them in prison. The tag was changed to communist after the war. The communist tag was very dangerous even after we became independent. It was a tag of death or life imprisonment. Reading or holding a piece of communist literature or listening to communist broadcast was serious enough to have the tag pinned on for a life behind bars.

There were other tags like chauvinist, racist, religious bigots etc etc that were used in the past. Even anti govt or anti establishment tag can be dangerous. Was there an opposition camp tag?

Then, with the resurgence of terrorism, the terrorist tag became the new fearsome one. They are useful and important in genuine cases when terrorists are tagged correctly and kept from mischief and destruction. The concern is if someone is mis-tagged or wrongly branded for the wrong reasons.

There are signs of a new tag appearing. The xenophobia card is being waved furiously these days. Would this become the new tag to be pinned as a badge of dishonour and for more sinister things to come?

Branding is so easy a thing to do.

Are Sinkie smug or daft?

Over the recent furore of xenophobia as claimed by the media and people in high places, it has somehow added fire to feed the anger of Sinkies towards foreigners. There were many comments by bloggers in TRE showing contempt for foreigners for not being able to speak English.

Language has become the latest kid for bashing. Foreigners coming here must speak English and nothing else. Hindi, Tagalog, Thai etc are not acceptable. Sinkies refused to speak to them if they can’t speak English. What is laughable or obnoxious is that they even rejected Mandarin as a language of Sinkies. What’s happening?

The immediate question is whether Sinkies are daft or smug or both. The next question is that our education system and our national policy on bilingualism must have failed miserably. These Sinkies, true blue Sinkies, not newly minted type, did not know that Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Sinkieland. Cannot speak, refuse to speak Mandarin, feeling hurt, insulted when foreigners speak to them in Mandarin! And sadder still, many knew how to speak Mandarin but refused to communicate with the foreigner in Mandarin. The foreigners must speak English.

What is the justification? Sinkies will not bend backwards to accommodate foreigners by speaking to them in the foreigner’s language, which happens to be one of our official languages, and deliberately making things difficult to the foreigners by demanding to speak in English and nothing else.

Other than creating four official languages to level the playing field, other than having the mother tongue as a social ballast to keep the westernised Sinkies rooted to their own culture, language is simply a tool for communication. The basic aim of bilingualism is to arm Sinkies to be able to communicate with East and West, which is one of our strength. Now jokers did not want to speak anything else except English to spike foreigners. Jokers refused to acknowledge that Mandarin is one of our official languages. Maybe some jokers don’t even know of this fact.

It is not funny.

Untitled - A piece of RAR Art

More of my RAR Art pieces can be viewed at www.artofrar.blogspot.com