The Singapore Syndrome - The ironies of history a consequence of human stupidity

I happened to flip the switch and watch a forum titled 'Japan and Asean Relations' in Channel News Asia with four speakers, two Japanese and two bananas. The Japanese were not hiding anything. Their main agenda were to discredit China, sowed doubts and disinformation about the BRI and the AIIB and to tell Asean countries to militarise and to support Japan's militarisation to be the leader of Asean to confront China. The two bananas wholeheartedly agreed with the Japanese proposition and praised Japan as the most peaceful and trusted nation by the stupid Asean leaders. I make a distinction between leaders, people and bananas.

Japan is the most trusted country according to a survey conducted by one of the bananas among his peers. I must agree with him as the survey would be just another echoing chamber of like minded bananas. But it is not as simple as that. I thought about it and found a common thread among the South East Asian countries that believed in Japan as the most trusted country. All these countries were invaded, plundered and conquered by Japan during the invasion of Asia and SE Asia by the Japanese Imperial Armies. All were part of the Japanese Empire, their treasuries raided, countries looted, their people massacred, women raped, children bayoneted.

This link to love your conquerors is not unique just to Japan or to SE Asia. The Taiwanese also loved the Japanese after being conquered and ruled for more than 50 years, much longer than all the SE Asian countries but did not suffered as much as the SE Asian countries. The point is this, the more vicious and ruthless the invaders, the more loved and trusted they would be by the conquered leaders of the SE Asian countries. The people would be different as they were the ones that bore the brunt of the cruelties and atrocities of the Japanese/invaders, not the elite or leaders.

Take the same line of thinking to Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan. They were victims of the worst destructive forces of the American military might. The Philippines were conquered and ruled by the Americans for several decades, with many massacres. The Vietnamese almost went that way, suffered the most devastating bombings in human history, second to the atomic bombs in Japan.  The fact is that they all loved their conquerors/invaders, the Americans. The Indonesians are also very fond of the Dutch, their colonial masters. No need to say more about the Malaysians and Singaporeans. they often reminisced about the good times under their colonial masters.

There is another common thread here. Besides being loved and trusted by the victims of invasion, the opposite is that countries that did not invade, plunder, loot, rape or massacre people of other countries would be distrusted and even hated by the countries they did not invade or conquer. China is a perfect example of this love hate relationship. China did not invade or conquer any of the SE Asian countries but is hated and distrusted by them.

My conclusion, China would have been loved and trusted by the SE Asian countries if it had invaded them, conquered and ruled them, conducted atrocities against these little weak countries. Maybe China should learn from the Americans and the European powers, and Japan, invade and conquer all these silly countries if it wants to be loved and trusted by them, like Japan and the USA. This is the failure of China for not harbouring the thought of colonising these countries.

This theory is quite similar to the Stockholm Syndrome where the victims fell in love with their captors that held them hostage. Maybe I shall called this the Singapore Syndrome or SE Asia Syndrome. I thought about calling it the Asean Syndrome or the Banana Syndrome. After thinking it over, the Singapore Syndrome is most appropriate as the greatest admirers of Japan, the brutal invaders, are from Singapore.

Come to think of it, the choice of Syonan as the name to remember fondly of the Japanese Invasion was not surprising. If that idea was not stopped, the next thing would be the demolishing of the War Memorial to remember the hundreds of thousands massacred by the Japanese during the Occupation, and probably another shrine to be built in its place to remember the heroic Japanese Imperial Army and the Kempeitai. They loved them and trusted them dearly. You have the most pristine display of the Singapore Syndrome here in this island.

Singaporeans need the protection of stringent laws against fake news

Yes, you read me correctly, Singapore must pass more stringent and even draconian laws to protect the daft and hapless Singaporeans from fake news. Fake news is not only dangerous but becomes much more dangerous in the Singapore context because daft Singaporeans cannot tell the difference between fake news and real news.


How could that be? Didn’t Singapore have the best education system and with some of the top universities in the world taught by the best ang mohs and third world best professors? Didn’t this world best education system and the world best professors that money could buy teach the Singaporeans to think, to be discerning, to know simple things like fakes and truths? The education system in Singapore is so expensive not for no reasons. It is quality education measured by how much is being paid to get educated in this world best education system. How could it produce duds? Is there a contradiction?
 
Can anyone see the contradiction or something wrong with this world best education system that produced daft and unthinking Singaporeans that need to be protected from fake news? I see no difference because Singaporeans are by nature daft and no amount of good and expensive education can help them to be just a bit smarter to protect themselves from fake news. Papa is right and doing the right thing.
 
Didn’t they build a first world city from the third world? Yah hor, how could that happened to a daft people? How could they build a world class city if they are or were daft? The only reason I can think of is that Singaporeans were not daft then but the new Singaporeans are. How come?
 
The proof is everywhere. There are more than 2m foreigners here, many from the third world with fake or funny degrees that are employed to replace them. If this is not enough proof that they are daft, I can go on. Singapore is a banking and financial centre but got no banking and financial talents. The top bankers are almost entirely recruited from the third world where they got backward financial and banking industry. Funny isn’t it? Let me make it funnier. Singapore is supposed to be a modern cosmopolitan city, a smart city, but got no IT talent. Almost all its IT talents came from the third world countries, and more are being recruited, more are coming by the plane loads. You know why? Exactly, to replace the daft and no talent Singaporeans of course. Want me to go on?
 
Singapore is a tropical country, but all the talents managing the tropical gardens in Singapore are foreigners from temperate land. This has been happening since the independence of Singapore. They could not find a Singaporean with enough local and tropical knowledge to run these gardens. How come locals, oops, I should not use this bastard word, how come Singaporeans brought up in a tropical island cannot manage tropical gardens but foreigners that never lived in the tropical region know better? Daft question.
 
We don’t even have talents to study and implement solar energy system here despite being under the sun all year round but need foreigners from cold temperate countries to teach us how to do it.
 
OK, ok, let me not go too far to say we have no talent. We have talents doing research about the Artic and Antarctic regions. For what I don’t know. We are no good and know nothing about our tropical region but got experts studying about the cold north and south poles. See, we got talents.
 
Oops, I digress from the fake news and stringent laws to protect daft and unthinking Singaporeans. How many of you would now agree with me that daft Singaporeans need more stringent and draconian laws to protect them?
 
My reasoning very cheem and very correct right? To introduce such draconian and stringent laws is an acknowledgement that our education system, the schools, polytechnics, the universities, have failed to educate the people to think. If they have done their job to educate the daft, then there will be no need to protect them from simple things like knowing what is true or fake news. I rest my case.

How the white Americans cheat the world to get rich

They were enterprising, yes, but they would not have been that enterprising without cheating the rest of the world to get a jump start to wealth and glory. The wealth of the white Americans are built on cheats and deceits, on plunders, violations of human rights and laws, and wars. Let me put it in very plain terms for all to understand.
 
First they came and conquered, killing the native Americans and stole all their land, for free and termination of a civilization of people. They got free land from the native Americans, a whole continent of it. That is why they called America the Land of the Free!
 
Next, they built their farms and agriculture on free labour. Yes, they had free labour from the African continents. They treated the Africans as beasts of burden, as slaves, to work for free for the white farmers. Now you know why America is called the land of the free, free labour, pleasures from the African womenfolks included.
 
This is not enough, they got free labour from the Chinamen to build railroads. The Chinamen were treated not much different from the slaves from Africa. See, everything is free in the Land of the Free, to the white men.
 
After stealing land and exploiting free labour, another remembers anything about human rights, they got free money from the rest of the world. How did they do it?
 
It’s elementary Watson! The rest of the world have to give free money to the Americans to spend lavishly on themselves. Still dunno how they did it? Petrol dollar! Let me give you a simple analogy. If India or Indonesia or Japan needs to buy petrol, they must buy US dollars first. They need to go to an American bank and exchange their rupees, rupiahs and yen for American dollars to buy oil from the Arabs. The Arabs gave away their oil, lost their oil to get American dollars. The Indians, Indonesians, Japanese, the rest of their world, lost their currencies to get the oil. The Americans did nothing but collected all the monies from the rest of the world. All they did was to print American dollars without a sweat for the billions, trillions, quadrillions, the rest of the world voluntarily gave to them in exchange for the papers they printed.
 
Now you understand how the Americans got so rich without having to work? Now you understand why petrol dollar is so important to the Americans, to make them so rich without having to work a day? In the Land of the Free, they get free money from the rest of the world to spend. The biggest and most lucrative product of the USA is the American dollar.
 
With all the wealth they accumulated from free land, free labour and free money, they could invest in R and D, in education, in the finer things in life. But they did more. They continue to exploit the rest of the world by starting wars, starting fires every where. Then they sell them weapons to fight more wars. And as the rest of the world are madly engaging in wars, they forget that they have to build their countries, develop their countries and build a better life for their people.
 
The rest of the world are so lost in fighting wars, preparing for wars, engaged in arm race, to buy more weapons for wars. And the American military war complex keeps producing more weapons for the rest of the world to indulge in wars while the Americans continue to live in peace in homeland America, Land of the Free.
 
The Americans don’t just export weapons, they export wars. This is how the Americans destabilised countries, kept them busy fighting and buying weapons and forgot about developing their countries and economies.
 
Thank you very much.

59 interviewees attended the Select Committee on fake news

Out of 59 people interviewed by this Committee, only 4 objected to more stringent laws to curb fake news. Oops, I forgot to add the Facebook rep and the objections from Google and Twitters. So, with so many people in favour of stringent laws, not sure about the 3.5 million Singaporeans, the majority win. So the people favour more stringent laws to protect them from fake news. Anyone out there saying No? I can’t hear you, or you are not counted, irrelevant. The gods said so and have decided.
 
From the reports in the media, the impression I got from the questions posed by the committee members, it seems that they are all for more stringent laws and they were there to convince everyone interviewed why more stringent laws are needed. At least that is what I perceived. My question, is the job of this Select Committee to gather feedback, a consultation platform, or is its job to tell everyone interviewed to comply, that more stringent laws on fake news are good?
 
Oh, Edwin Tong said the existing laws not enough and many things related to fake news cannot be charged in court. Please, can I have some examples of what are not covered by the existing laws and fake news writers can write them and get a way from being charged in courts? Surely there must be real examples right? It cannot be red herrings right, or test balloons? Oops, cannot say test balloons, afterwards got to apologise.
 
I think everyone would like Edwin Tong or whoever who said that there are things that are not covered by existing laws to give specific examples and not just say things but cannot give examples right? Please do not use the Cambridge Analytica case as this is cyber espionage or cyber warfare. This is more than just fake news, it is conspiracy.
 
It cannot be like got people go to Batam and spent all their CPF savings to live like emperors for a few days so everyone’s CPF savings kena locked up. Can give examples or not? Or if only a handful, why everyone is punished? Why waste so much of the time of super talents and demi gods to talk about something that only a handful of people would violate and better still, not covered by our existing laws? How much money and precious time were wasted on this thing called fake news? Come to think about it everything one does not agree can be fake news.
 
What do you think?
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Don’t fake the news

Ever since Donald Trump became US president, it’s been my habit to do constant Google checks for any wayward sparks the gentleman may care to generate in the waking hours of his day. And he has been most obliging. Just hours ago, The Guardian online reported that Trump had tweeted “misleading photos” to suggest that his proposed 2,000-mile “wall” with Mexico was underway. How? Well, the guy simply tweeted images of work being done on a 2-mile stretch of barrier last month BEFORE Congress refused to fully fund the wall’s construction. In fact, Congress had since agreed to allot only US$1.6 billion for a project estimated to cost over $20 billion. In short, Trump was using images of work done on a 2-mile stretch to create the illusion of work done on a 2,000-mile stretch. (“Great briefing this afternoon on the start of our Southern Border WALL!” gushed the man)

In a week where fake news was very much in the news, Trump’s action showed that it is not just the media or ordinary netizens who are capable of faking the news. If it suits their purpose, governments and leaders are equally adept at online fabrications. Academic Dr Norman Vasu said at the public hearings of the Select Committee on deliberate online falsehoods that there are six categories of online falsehoods based on the degree of threat they pose, with disinformation aimed at undermining society topping the list. Under this categorisation, Trump’s misleading photos on the Great Wall of Mexico would probably rank somewhere near the bottom. But a fake is a fake, so shouldn’t Americans ask the president to take down the phony photos? Or must it really be sufficiently serious?  If so, who decides how serious? If it’s the government, then who will order a take-down if the government is behind the fake news (as in Trump’s case)?  

Fake news is a by-product of Internet technology. In the pre-Internet age, we only have to contend with rumours, spread by word of mouth, not click of mouse. Hence the attendant issues we now face have no precedent or proven solutions. But one thing remains the same. As in the past, the role of the government is a bone of contention. Activists claim we don’t need new laws as there are enough existing ones to deal with online falsehoods.  What is needed is greater public access to information and improved media literacy. Not so, says the government as it pointed to a poll last year indicating that over 90% of Singaporeans supported stronger laws to remove or correct fake news. Whatever it may be, there’s no faking that we are all in new territory and it’ll take us a while to get it right.