A SINGAPOREAN man caught with a child porn video on his mobile phone at Darwin airport has been convicted and fined $5,000 reported Northern Territory News.  Rahmat bin Amin, 44, had a 20-second video called ‘12-year-olds’ on his phone, showing a young girl having sex with a man. He pleaded guilty in Darwin Magistrates Court to importing the video.

Source: ST

This is interesting news.  Why would the Australians check Rahmat’s handphone?  I mean really, have your handphone ever been checked while passing through an airport?  Unless, of course, Rahmat attracted the attention of the airport authorities as a result of some serious immigration-related matter or offence.  Another possibility did cross my mind – that Rahmat was the victim of racial/religious profiling by the Aussies. 

Well, I shan’t guess further given the lack of details.  A related concern is on how porn appears to be getting to your youths via the mobile phone.  A Sunday Time check with 15 teens who surf on their phones showed at least seven have visited porn sites, and two have watched or tried accessing content. Mr Poh Yeang Cherng, manager of Touch Cyber Wellness and Sports, estimated that the number of young people surfing for porn on cellphones could be higher than those doing so via personal computers. The mobile platform is “subject to less control and moderation”.

The response from MOE?  Mr Boo Hian Kok, principal of Beatty Secondary School, said “We can’t carry out spot checks to see what students have on their phones. The important thing is education; to teach kids to make good choices based on good values and a strong moral compass.”  Parents  also have a big part in this, although people like Rahmat, a father of two, are hardly good role models.

On the on hand, parents need to be strict but yet not lose trust in their children.  On the other hand, which growing child isn’t curious about the birds and the bees?  So how?  Perhaps this advice offered by one “Cabbage” is most satisficing:

• Kids: Go encrypt your porn. Don’t get caught, yeah?
• Parents: At least your kids aren’t doing the real thing. Yet.
• Over-paranoid parents: Ban them from hi-tech phones, simple.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysia is starting a food fight with other countries to win bragging rights for producing some of Southeast Asia’s most beloved recipes, including chili crabs and coconut cream rice, a news report said Thursday. “We cannot continue to let other countries hijack our food,” The Star newspaper quoted Tourism Minister Ng Yen Yen as saying while launching a campaign to promote the country’s cuisine.

Source: AP

Well, one thing that the no other country can lay claim to is Singapore’s unique approach to managing ethnicity.  Today, as we celebrate Hari Raya Aidilfitri, we should remember that Singaporean Malays, whilst being accorded special privileges in Article 152, are still missing out in society.  As commented by Ismail Kassim in Theonlinecitizen:  When Singapore was in Malaysia, Lee demanded full equality for everyone irrespective of race and religion. He was not prepared to wait.  Now, he argues that it will take decades and even centuries before the minorities especially the Malays could hope for equal treatment in all sectors of life.

Mr Khaw joins other ministers and MPs like Foreign Minister George Yeo and Senior Parliamentary Secretary Teo Ser Luck who have started blogging to engage the public in a more personal way. He said he wants to use such online platforms to share the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) plans, get feedback and suggestions and ‘forge consensus’. He added: ‘I hope to anchor in this platform a large constituency of Singaporeans who are interested in health matters, whom we can directly engage through this medium.’

Source: ST

Mr Khaw said he hoped to be open with the workings of the ministry through the blog, which was set up earlier this month and is not a personal one. ‘Every health policy should be based on sound arguments and we do not monopolise wisdom,’ he wrote. ‘If our policy is flawed and can be enhanced, we welcome comments and will adopt practical suggestions.’

If it’s not a personal blog, I suppose Mr Khaw will not be giving his personal take on policies and responding to public comments. Something which he may have learnt from Mr Yeo’s experience with Mr Chee Soon Juan perhaps? So what is the value of this MOH blog? Mr Khaw wants to share the MOH’s plans, get feedback and suggestions and ‘forge consensus’. Can’t this be done via MOH’s website? Perhaps the Minister doesn’t really understand the concept of blogging.

This lame effort by MOH to connect with the online citizenry is evidence of the PAP’s continuing failure to understand new media. This is their achilles’ heel, one which opposition parties should take full advantage of during the next general elections.

The UK Daily Mail reported that the Orthodox Church would be unwavering in its stance considering homosexuality. Spokesman Father Georgy Gulyaev of the Donetsk Diocese of the Orthodox Church said: “Thank God it’s impossible under Ukrainian law for Elton John to adopt a child.   The Church is strictly against same-sex marriages and the damage they cause. It’s written in Holy Scriptures that homosexual marriage and relations is a sin.  It is a sin, it is against nature, and it represents the dead end of human development.”

Source:  NY Daily News

According to the Church, “This is definitely a sin, there is no other word for it, and the church will never agree that people who have created same-sex “marriage” could also dare to adopt children.  This applies to all, including Elton John. He is a sinner.”  I wonder if a local Church, or Mosque or Temple for that matter, can just speak up on a social issue such as this openly (e.g. via the media). 

When blogging about the news portal Singanews, Sam wrote that people who subscribe to “mainstream family values”, whether or not a discursive camouflage for Christian doctrine, deserve to participate and be represented in the public domain.   They certainly do – everyone should and must have a voice in society.  And how can one separate family and personal values from religion?  Can Muslims separate family virtues from Islamic principles?

I await the day where there is true freedom of speech.  We can all agree to disagree without the need for any one opinion-maker to be demonised.  Only when there is freedom of expression would religious individuals desist from using secular forms as cover to articulate their views.

According to complementary Reuters articles today, Hollywood appears to have a new foe: capitalism. One article is about Oliver Stone’s new film, which portrays socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as a “champion of the poor” who is “unfairly demonized by the U.S. media.” Another article reports on Michael Moore’s latest “documentary,” where he concludes that “Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil.” Both films premiered at the Venice film festival this weekend.

Source: The Alantic

The first Reuters article focuses on Stone’s complaint that U.S. distributors are showing little interest in his film “South Of The Border.” That’s probably not surprising, considering the U.S. is not on very good terms with Chavez.  Michael Moore takes a different route in endorsing socialism — by attempting to tear down U.S. capitalism. His film responds to the financial crisis by portraying Wall Street and banks as gamblers whose negligence almost destroyed the nation.

I wonder if we would get to see the films here in Singapore.  I guess we should, given that the contents do not feature Singapore opposition politicians.  Capitalism does have it evils as profit-centric policies and social policies tend to be at odds.  The former usually prevails over the latter resulting in social and income divides.  It is a shame if such revelations are censored by the capitalists.

Vietnam has freed a blogger who was recently detained over a plan to distribute anti-China T-shirts, he said on Sunday, as Communist Party chief Nong Duc Manh prepared to leave on a visit to Australia and New Zealand.  The reason Hanoi police gave Bui Thanh Hieu when they let him go on Saturday evening was “the cancellation of preventative measures,” said Hieu, who spent nine nights in detention.

Source: Reuters

Hieu said Pham Doan Trang, a journalist for the highly popular news Web site VietnamNet, who was detained a day after him, had also been freed, but there was no immediate confirmation of that.  Hieu was frequently critical of government policy on issues such as China policy and Catholic Church land disputes on his blog, “Nguoi Buon Gio,” or Wind Trader.  He confirmed he had been detained in connection with a plan to print and distribute to major Vietnamese cities T-shirts opposing China’s involvement in a bauxite mining scheme and claims over disputed islands in the South China Sea.

Like Vietnam, Singapore also have problems coping with bloggers who take it upon themselves to advocate and champion civic causes for the betterment of society.  Singapore’s latest action against a blogger exercising his right of free speech is to try him for ‘mis-conduct.’  The Singapore Law Society had submitted an application to the Chief Justice claiming that former Singaporean lawyer Gopalan Nair has “brought the profession as a whole into disrepute and lowered its esteem in the eyes of the general public”.  Perhaps the Law Society should check with the public first on how highly regarded the judiciary appears to them in the first place.  When will the courts understand how negatively Singaporeans view the countless law suits brought (and won) against politicians?

I and hundreds of others were arbitrarily arrested on the 2nd of February, 1963. Many are still in prison. Ever since that day, we were, and are, unjustly and arbitrarily detained in prison without any kind of trial whatsoever for over 9 years. We have gone through various kinds of persecution, struggles, hardships and difficulties during this very long period of over nine years of detention in prison.

Source: Singapore Rebel

History is manufactured by whoever that is in power. If we as voters are not diligent ourselves in trying to find out about the truth, than we only have ourselves to blame for our future.

After Singapore government let the financial institutions screw the small guys, they are now telling me, it is all in my mind?! WTF. Do these highly paid people think the rest of us will willingly be Ah Q?

We help ourselves. Don’t expect others to help

Tom Wright painted a bleak picture of Singapore’s property sector going forward at The Wall Street Journal. His article ended with the following:
“I’m yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel [for Singapore],” says Mr. Tan, the high-end broker.
We would expect people to continue to dig the dirt and tell it to [...]



Our skin isn’t as thick as it should be

The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) organised a seminar on March 4 to discuss Singapore’s political blogosphere.  Tan Tarn How, Senior Research Fellow and Research Assistant Tan Simin presented their paper on trends observed in the blogosphere.  As reported in the TOC, the researchers identified the following limitations:

The online-offline firewall, while somewhat alleviated by offline [...]



Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew – The answer to the African problem?

Recently, I followed a thread “Democracy and Economic Growth” which started in PoliticsForum.org.   Apparently, members there often question the role of democracy in a developing nation. “During the wave of democratization in Africa during the 90s, many people had renewed hope for the continent, immediately equating newly established democracies to economic growth. Are these democracies [...]



Tell Singapore government: Ask them a question or give a suggestion

We informed people about the “Tell Singapore Government” subsite and have received some interesting reaction at some forums.
See: 3in1 Kopitiam, Sam’s Alfresco Coffee, Singapore Kopitiam, SgForums
Our responses to some of the comments are listed below. If we are not answering some other specific questions, that is because we do not know how.
 

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