Singapore Notes

Just like the National Library prefers to pulp books instead of burning them, the Media Development Authority (MDA) chose to slap a NAR rating (Not Allowed for All Ratings) instead of an outright ban on the award winning film "To Singapore, With Love". Producer Tan Pin Pin won international accolades for her effort, including Best Director at the Muhr AsiaAfrica Documentary Awards at the Dubai Film Festival 2013, and put our budding film industry in the limelight. In 2007, "Zahari's 17 Years" was actually banned by the government, but that caused such a stink that MDA must have learnt its bitter lesson about showcasing draconian methodologies.

When MDA declared that its contents "undermined national security", there was a glimpse of hope we may finally get to see how Mas Selamat climbed out a toilet window, giving future detainees a sneak preview of how to exit a supposedly secure detention facility with the greatest of ease. Nope, they objected to "untruthful accounts of how they came to leave Singapore". They meaning exiles who had to flee for their personal safety, like Tan Wah Piow who was let out of the prison gates only to be thrown straight into the clutches of the armoured division. The Singapore armed forces that we know doesn't exactly have a pristine safety record. Young lives are crushed under "parked" military vehicles, limbs severed in naval exercises, asthmatics snuffed out by smoke grenades, etc, etc.

The except from Berlinale (Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin) starts like this:

"Some places are better observed from a distance if you want to grasp their inner essence. For this portrait of her hometown, the tropical economic powerhouse of Singapore, Tan Pin Pin decided on a strictly external perspective. She meets with political exiles in London, Thailand, and Malaysia who had to leave the city thirty-five or fifty years ago – and who are to this day not permitted to return unless they die and their relatives bring back their ashes. The protagonists of the film fought for increased democracy and for Singapore to be freed from colonialism."

There must be more truth in that paragraph than the storyline that required 62 script revisions for the upcoming "1965" propaganda movie that will cost taxpayers $2.8 million. They must have had lots of problems with the part about collaborating with the Japanese occupiers when Singapore was Syonanto.

MDA is insisting the movie is wrong, that former CPM members "can return if they agree to be interviewed by the authorities on their past activities to resolve their cases". Even if they were never card carrying members of the Communist Party of Malaysia? Chia Thye Poh was never a member of the CPM. He lost the best years of his life just because one man said so. And that's the hard truth.

Some pictures are really worth a thousand words. The body language of each player could have such a rich story to tell: the immigrant made good (trying hard anyway), the sneering driver going about his job (having lost the last better paying one to a foreign talent), the lawyer pondering if justice is really blind (after blowing his parents' savings for an overseas degree). There's enough material on the canvas for Tan Pin Pin to craft another award winner, albeit one that will not undermine the security of the nation. If the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) says okay, it must be okay.

The hot potato has landed on ICA's lap. The story of yin and yang (yīn陰 or 阴 "shady side" and yáng陽 or 阳 "sunny side"), hard steel of greed preying on the soft heart of an old woman. What's on the lips of everyone is how a tour guide from China was granted an employment pass. The ICA website says any foreigner interested to work and has a job offer in Singapore may apply for an Employment Pass. The applicant will need to earn at least $3,300 and possess acceptable qualifications.

The guy first came in on a 4-week holiday in 2009. He was employed by a company set up in his own name and that of the retired physiotherapist. As a director of Young Music and Dance Studio, he may have been free to set his own compensation package, an unfettered practice indulged in by some politicians. Although the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry (SCCCI) has challenged the claim of directorship, ICA may have considered other acceptable qualifications. Photographic images of Kodak moments with key political figures may have carried the weight of an imprimatur. A letter of support from a standing member of parliament may have sealed the deal. Which could add up to explain the accelerated award of Permanent Residence status by 2011.

Recall in 2009, ICA was having a whale of a time, issuing entry papers like it was going out of style. The auntie hawking alcoholic beverages at kopi-tiams island wide lost their jobs to more lithe versions from the Middle Kingdom. The PMETs (Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians) will have their own taste of the bitter concoction a few years later. Not content with their place in our land of opportunity, some imported talents stalked senior citizens, targeting a soft spot with their sob stories of hardship back home.

While clearing the personal effects of a relative who passed away recently, we came across an entry in his notebook. He was a thrifty person who always saved for a rainy day, and actually had some money to leave behind for siblings. But not before some China crow got to him first. "Damn China girl," he wrote, "cheated me of $8,000."

It was West Virginia University (WVU) who outed the fraudster, Anoop Shankar, former academic at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Shankar did not have a doctorate degree, and he did not graduate from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi as claimed in his resume. NUS confirmed that Shankar was employed as assistant professor with the Department of Community, Occupational and Family Medicine at NUS' Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine from 2005 to 2008.

All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the barrel, and that’s because the one apple that’s gone bad gives off ethylene, speeding the ripening of all the other apples in the same confine. But Shankar was not the only rotten fruit.

Thanks to an anonymous tip, in March 2011, the National University of Singapore (NUS) launched an investigation on one of its former scientists, the immunologist Alirio Melendez, for alleged research misconduct in two papers.

Melendez had joined NUS in 2001, and was awarded a prestigious "young researcher" accolade in 2007. In same year he moved to the University of Liverpool and the University of Glasgow in the UK, whilst maintaining his lab at Singapore until 2009. When the NUS investigation was still ongoing, Melendez resigned his position at Liverpool University in November 2011 (he was suspended from his role since April 2011, without prejudice, pending the outcome of the investigation). Glasgow University said it had concluded its own investigation in October 2011, but it was the university’s policy "not to comment on individual cases".

A blog called the Gigamole Diaries pointed out that the NUS deputy president connected to the investigation had co-authored two papers with Melendez:

"…the authorship list for Melendez papers reads almost like a Who’s Who in the medical school, and includes heads of departments, Vice Deans and prominent individuals in the office of the NUS Vice President. Interestingly Prof Barry Halliwell, who is NUS Deputy President (Research and Technology), and who has been cited as fronting the investigation into the Melendez publications is himself associated with at least 2 Melendez publications."

After 19 long months, the NUS in December 2012 finally reported that it had determined one of its former scientists, the immunologist Alirio Melendez, had committed “serious scientific misconduct”. The university found fabrication, falsification or plagiarism associated with 21 papers. It added that no evidence indicating that other co-authors were involved in the misconduct. But the university would not identify the papers retracted, nor release the report of the committee that investigated them. The list of retracted papers, a correction and an expression of concern, are available at Retraction Watch.

It's the same old story, what to do, done already. Please move on, nothing to see here. It’s “standard operating procedure” to sweep inconvenient truths under the carpet, so we’ll just keep doing things our way, thank you very much.

Just as Dr Intan Azura Binte Mokhtar spoke up in support of the carpetbagger Yang Yin, Associate Professor Koh Woon Puay of Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School maintains she has not found any reason to question Shankar's credentials, "Personally, I did not have any reason to suspect at that time that he was not trained in epidemiology or statistics to carry out his research." Koh is co-author of three papers they had worked on. One blogger explains the method for the madness:

"In the NUS, I am told, there is a scheme of apportioning glory and credit for scientific publications. This is for the purpose of chalking up points for promotions and other 'rewards'. The lead and the corresponding authors get 50% of the credit each. All the other co-authors stuck in between get 10% each. On this model, one published paper with a mass grave of 10 co-authors can chalk up a total of 180% credit."

First Came The Insult

Then The Abject Apology

This is getting tiresome.

The law makers want to jail Singaporean motorists - one whole year behind bars - for using their handset while at the wheel. As if that's not harsh enough, the Traffic Police fined 564 for changing lanes without signalling in advance - a simple warning was never in the cards. That's just for the first 6 months of this year. At $70 a pop for light vehicles or $100 for heavy ones, that should pay for the announced salary increases of the "Home Team".

No wonder the foreigners have the impression that we are pushovers.

The English translation of the subtitle does not quite do it justice ("Because I have not yet seen anyone who puts principles before licentiousness", Chinese: 微臣從沒見過如斯好德如好色的人), but you get the drift.

The gravitas of the moment comes off best in the narration by Meher McArthur in his little book about the sage, "Confucius".

Confucius (a.k.a. 孔子 Kǒng Zǐ, literally "Master Kong") had received an invite from the wife of the Duke of Wei, a woman of questionable character. Nanzi was notorious for her sexual intrigues and immoral behaviour. A foreign talent from the neighbouring state of Song, she had been having an incestuous relationship with her brother before marrying the Duke. Confucius could not refuse for fear of offending his powerful host; he was looking forward to finding satisfactory employment in the Wei government.

"Shortly after his first visit, Duke Ling invited him to join him and his wife in some sort of procession that may actually have been held in Confucius' honour. Apparently , the Duke and his wife rode in the first carriage, with Confucius and Nanzi's eunuch escort in the carriage behind them. The people of Wei saw the incongruity of this display and shouted out, "Lust in the front; virtue behind!" (pages 128,129)

Confucius was deeply embarrassed, and made the very cynical observation, "I have not seen one who loves virtue as he loves beauty." Following, Confucius gathered his followers and left Wei in disgust.

Such is the state of affairs in the current governance. There's no beauty in a birthday bash for 50 or 91 years, when the needy senior citizens are robbed of access to their own life savings when they reach age 55.

It's no fun being an inventor in Singapore when big brother is out to grab your ideas. Yiap was too trusting in February 2001 when he presented his design for a clothes drying rack system to the officers at the Housing & Development Board (HDB).

HDB lawyers Darrell Low and May Tan told the court that the board had been "reviewing available racks" since year 2000 - see 5 designs considered in the Facebook page "Development of HDB Clothes Drying Systems". Meaning, Yiap's invention could have been included in the survey. HDB dissed his creative effort as unsuitable, and proceeded to implement their own system in August 2001. Maybe the HDB had cherry picked the best of the features in rack systems they had come across, Yiap's ideas included.

But that was not the crux of the legal arguments presented in court. HDB said Yap only applied for the patent in February 2003. The technicality of timing was repeated by the lawyers in highlighting that potential patent infringement was suggested only in 2006, and the statutory time limit for filing a legal challenge, being only 6 years, had run out. Timing plays a crucial role in Singapore events because a walkover in Tanjong Pagar during GE2011 was decided by the tardy bureaucratic processing of another challenger's nomination papers. The losers have their own story to tell.

It was Justice Chan Seng Oon who mooted a more palatable justification for junking the intellectual property claim: that Yiap had calculated the load bearing capacity of his system to accommodate the weight of a human body, in case someone should fall while hanging out the heavy clothes to dry. HDB chose to save on the cost of engineering materials, and not incorporate the safety factor for the protection feature. Rather, they preferred to let their customers hang out to dry. The profit motive for a less robust design variant is consistent with the philosophy of the day, "what's wrong with collecting more money" ?

peering into the darknesss....

... with photoshop magic

The first photographic image accompanies Heng Swee Kiat's Facebook post:
"Grateful to Mr Lee for making the time for his former PPSs and some staff to celebrate his 91st birthday with him tonight. Not many people see this side of Mr Lee, but I have always found him to be caring to his staff."

It must be a very dark night indeed, either that or nobody is allowed to see who/what has been cropped out of the picture. Grassroots devotees fallen out of favour? Former comrades uninvited from the occasion? Maybe the Minister for Education has a lesson plan in mind.

According to textbook author Thanom Anarmwat, the Thai Ministry of Education had ordered that the name of Thaksin Shinawatra be expunged from new history books. The Education Ministry’s instruction is seen as part of a broader effort to instill patriotism in Thai youth, along with a new school curriculum that underlines the unifying themes of the monarchy and the glories of the ancient kingdoms of Siam, as Thailand was formerly known. Inglorious basterds have no place in such history.

In Asia, government deletions of undesirable facts and faces from official archives are not uncommon practice. In China, history textbooks do not mention the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square. One lass recruited from PRC simply excused herself from awareness of that nasty bit, because she was not born yet. She will be well taken care of in Singapore for 11 years, 1 year to learn English, 4 years in university, and 6 years to serve out the bond. She sure knows which side of her bread is buttered.

The grand daddy of guided education and censorship has to be Joseph Stalin. Russian books were rewritten, censored and introduced to teach everyone the ideas of Stalin in schools. He also had all the history of the old communists/exiles erased from education books and reprinted to sanitised versions that gave him more of an elevated role than he deserved. This ultimately gave Stalin control over the young generation of the Soviet Union, as they were led to believe in what was taught to them.

There are skeptics who believe the age of the internet is going to be different. “This is very much the usual practice of Thai elite,” said Charnvit Kasetsiri, former rector of the prestigious Thammasat University. “But it will be difficult because of social media and because it is not that easy to control the thinking of the masses, especially educated youth.”

During the stopover in Hong Kong, Lee Hsien Loong said that while he is glad the Americans have taken a stand against the Islamic State militant group, Singapore has yet to decide whether or how it will support the United States-led coalition campaign. His first direct comment on the global effort to combat the Islamic State (ISIS) militants in the Middle East reminds one of the ant who climbed up the backside of an elephant, with the intention of rape.

Note it was the Malaysian police once again, not Teo Chee Hean's highly decorated Home Team, who provided the details about the Penang-born PR and his Singaporean wife who brought their two teenage children to fight alongside the militants in Syria. The family was only briefly mentioned in Parliament by Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Teo as being "among a handful of Singapore citizens" who had gone to participate in the conflict. Maybe it's too inconvenient to reveal more about what they don't know, just like they are being awfully quiet about how the scumbag Yang Yin was granted his residential papers in double quick time.

It's one thing to patrol the waters off Somalia for anti-piracy duties, it's another to send our boys smack into real harm's way. The hand held surface-to-air-missile (SAM) launchers that brought a Black Hawk down in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu can easily swipe our pretty F-16s or F-15s off the skies like any pesky mosquito. The fate of a downed pilot is not a pretty prospect, not something they usually prim for at another national day parade flyby. Of course they can fly higher, but who's to say the militants don't have the Buk SAMs of the pro-Russian separatists at Donetsk?

A more important question: who decides when a nation goes to war? Even Obama had to seek the approval of Congress, one step closer to authorizing the third significant U.S. military operation in Iraq. And to think Obama is only paid peanuts to maintain world peace.

At a dialogue during “The Singapore Summit” conference on 20 Sep 2014 Lee Hsien Loong was reported as saying, “If we just open our doors and say everybody can come, free movement of labour, tomorrow, there will be one million people on their way here, maybe more. Some will fly, maybe more will come by boat, and I think it will be a very different Singapore. So, you can’t do that.”

That's a taiji move right there. Somebody else let in the barbarians, not him. Never mind if Yang Yin, MP Intan's grassroots Integration Champion, is feeling the heat right now. The new headache is how to handle the aliens who have settled within the city gates.

We were unfortunate to be seated at the same table as one of those new citizens at a clan dinner, partially funded by the $10 million budget for making foreigners feel welcomed. Husband and wife have been in country for more than 5 years, but they still weren't prepared to converse in English or Singlish, each attempt at polite discourse was responded to in Mandarin. We had to speak their mother tongue. On learning that the guy was a music teacher at a local primary school, the obvious thought that came to mind was whether that was a rare talent not found among Singaporeans. When a quartet of senior ladies took to the stage, he volunteered to lead the impromptu choir, but proceeded to drown out all the female voices with his show-off baritone. Yang Yin is not the only one warming up to the support of fans like Intan and the like.

Fortunately, Singaporeans are not about to start a bash a foreigner a day campaign. Unlike the extremist call by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group to kill all citizens of Western countries taking part in the US-led anti-extremist coalition by any means - with or without military equipment, using rocks or knives, or by running people over. “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European - especially the spiteful and filthy French - or an Australian, or a Canadian or any other disbeliever... including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him,” declared Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, the group’s spokesman. (AFP, 23 Sep 2014)

Singaporeans are not that xenophobic. Still, it would be nice if the authorities hurry up and deal with the tour guide cum con artiste before it all turns ugly.

SingPost announced yesterday that ten million stamps will be given out to 1.4 million households here ahead of a planned increase in postage rates. Each household will receive a free stamp booklet worth - wait for it - all of S$1.80. Even if it's food stamps - which they aren't - that's not enough for a single meal.

And what will Singpost cream off for their largess? From the month of October onwards postage rates will be increased between 4c and 30c per mail item. International rates will be hiked higher with 5c to 25c increases while local mail will be between 4c to 20c more expensive than current rates. International Registered items will see a 30c increase in charges. They are giving you a drumstick while taking away the whole chicken.

The pathetic excuse is well used, this is the first time that SingPost has raised its rates in 8 years. Every government associated enterprise employs the same tagline: this is the first time that XXX has raised its rates in YY years. There's no need to explain why productivity has not caught up advances in technology.

Only recently Teo Chee Hean said life is getting better in Singapore because families are buying big screen LED TVs. He omitted to add that tiny detail that a 55 inch screen is now available for as low as $1000, compared to the $3000 - $4000 price tags they commanded a few years ago. Xiaomi's price buster Redmi costs a fraction of what more expensive models are retailing for. It has the same size 4.7 inch screen as an iPhone 6.

If one needs to examine why cost of living, and cost of doing business, is always on an upward trajectory in Singapore, look no further than the government imposed charges and tariffs. Will the various government bodies ever implement a much needed cost reduction program? Maybe when hell freezes over.

The blue noses in Singapore are awfully protective when it comes to what we are allowed to read - no penguins please, we're Singaporeans - and see, to the extent of invoking national security issues even when it's only a tear jerker of a movie about oldies pining for home in their sunset years.

But where was the Minister for Media Development Authority when J-Lo stuck out her big fat butt at an open air crowd of 60,000? Jen posted, following her performance: "Thank you for coming out #Singapore!!! 60K strong!!! Amazing night. @F1 Congrats @LewisHamilton. #SingaporeGP"

Maybe some topics are just not up for discussion at the national conversation, such as the report card for the finances of the F-1 night race, already 7 years in the running. Accountability apparently is not expected of Second Minister for Trade and Industry S Iswaran, when millions of dollars are burnt each year in September, the way the formula one cars incinerate rubber on the tracks. The race is co-funded by the Government of Singapore, dumb enough to foot 60% of the total bill, or $90 million, out of a total tab of $150 million, year after year.

Most of the money is pocketed by Bernie Ecclestone, the man who paid a £60m (US$100 million) settlement to a Munich court to stave off a 10 year jail term for a bribery charge. The man Ecclestone was accused of bribing, a public official on the board of a state-owned bank, was jailed for 8 1/2 years. Think about it, your taxes are helping to finance his get-out-of-jail-free card. What a bummer! In a Times interview published on 4 July 2009, Ecclestone actually said "terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was – in the way that he could command a lot of people – able to get things done."

The supportive politicians may have their own sound reasoning for not finding the particular view of J-Lo (or Ecclestone) offensive. From their perspective, it's a familiar sight. After all, most of them made it into parliament via the rear entrance. Whether they capable of commanding a lot of people and able to get things done is highly debatable.

One can appreciate the number of foreign construction workers needed in the country, and we are grateful to each and everyone of them for scaling the dizzying heights of tower cranes and scaffoldings to build our new landscape. Why the Immigration and Checkpoint Authority of Singapore (ICA) allowed so many non-construction sector foreigners to come in is the question begging to be answered.

The resident total fertility rate (TFR) fell to 1.19 in 2013 from 1.29 in 2012. The number of foreigners taking up employment here is still growing at nearly 3 times the total population growth rate, which expanded 1.3 per cent to 5.47 million as of June. That total population figure includes 20,000 new citizenships and 30,000 new permanent residencies (PRs) which the government continues to grant each year, despite the token measures and empty promises to reduce the foreign intake. All the numbers point toward the demise of the Singapore born and bred, destined to go the way of the dodo bird.

It was worst in 2011-12, when foreign employment growth was as high as 8.1 per cent. Those were the wild and woolly days when a tour guide with dubious credentials could easily sneak past the lax ICA.

Member of Parliament Intan Azura Mokhtar has now ponied up and admitted that, yes, she did write a letter of appeal on behalf of Yang Yin to the ICA. She downplayed her contribution to the perfidy that is alleged to have robbed an old woman of as much as $10 million in missing treasures. She must have written so many such letters for people she scarcely knows. Or so she claims.

Intan emphasised that she wrote the letter of support regarding Yang Yin's application for permanent residency (PR) at the behest of Madam Chung Khin Chun: "She first came to see me and sought my help in May 2011... for her grandson."

The ICA also emphasised that: "Individuals who provide false information in their applications for immigration facilities will be dealt with firmly under the law. In addition, they will have their immigration facilities cancelled or revoked.” What the ICA did not say is how members of parliament who provide false information in their petition letters will be dealt with.

This video is a fascinating documentation of how our vaunted Home Team members earn their pay. Firstly, they seem to like to go about their task incognito. They are obviously not proud of their smart tailored uniforms - recall the officer at Little India who was dressed down for showing up on duty without proper police attire. More revealing, their "warrant card" is just a mugshot, with no embossed name or identification number. Yang Yin will have a field day posing as a bogus officer. Even his name card provides more details, director of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry (fake), graduate of University of Financial and Trade Beijing China (fake), director of Young Music & Dance Studio Pte Ltd (2 employee company?), etc.

And then there's this ominous drone of a threat by NParks director Chia Seng Jiang to "take down your particulars", repeated ad finitum in the close encounter with the boys in mufti. Obedient Singaporeans usually produce their NRIC or driver's licence upon polite request; not some cheap printed name card like the one flashed by Yang Yin.

The article in TIME magazine ("Who Do You Trust", 6 Oct 2014) says police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, now wear a body camera after the unfortunate shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown. The intention was to increase transparency of encounters with the public, and with it, earn trust in the police reaction. A study in the Los Angeles suburb of Rialto found that the camera significantly reduced the incidence of police violence and the number of brutality complaints. Singapore Police Commissioner Ng Joo Hee also asked for body cameras in the wake of the Little India riot, but whether he shares the same aim of transparency is hard to fathom.

Interestingly, police are not the only ones suitably geared. Some Ferguson residents are now wearing a camera provided by We Copwatch, a group that raised US$6,000 on the Internet to provide them with cameras of their own. "If Ferguson police are going to video tape us, we're going to video tape them right back," said citizen Whitt, who posted his first contribution to YouTube.

Your smartphone has a built-in digital camera. Don't leave home without it, when you set out for a nice stroll in Hong Lim Park. Or any street in Singapore for that matter.

Don't mix up Hong Lim with Hong Kong

Right on cue, the mute button was toggled off. Politicians who stood idly by and played dumb for weeks while a 87 year old pioneer generation member was in grave danger of being robbed and pillaged by a foreign intruder were suddenly jostling to leap into a feeding frenzy. Note the common thread in the cacophony of protestations:

Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin:
"I am appalled. We now hecklespecial needs children? Vile. Total and absolute disgrace."
Social and Family Development Minister Chan Chun Sing:
"To cause alarm and distress to special needs children, and disrupting their routine cannot be right no matter how righteous you think your own cause may be. "
MP Janil Puthucheary:
"No excuse for bad behaviour, but especially not directed at kids."
MP Zaqy Mohamad:
"A pity that special needs children were heckled by protesters at event by YMCA at Hong Lim Park."
MP Ang Wei Neng:
"There was no good reason for the bloggers to hecklechildrenwith special needs and hurl vulgarities."
MP Denise Phua:
"I heard while the kids were not physically harmed, many were alarmed, confused and disturbed by the unexpected unruly turn of events."
MP Tin Pei Ling:
“What have these special needs children done to deserve being heckled down?”

You know brains have left the building when "Return our CPF" is construed as a phrase to "heckle" special needs children - unless the folks withholding our CPF are certified retards in the medical sense. Why did MP Teo Ser Luck, supposedly a "fixture" at the YMCA event (or NParks director Chia Seng Jiang who set the stage for a potent mix), insert the vulnerable kids into a crossfire of political ploy? A bit of history is enlightening:

"At about 10.35 pm that first evening (circa 1955), a mob had attacked a police patrol car with a British police lieutenant in charge, hurling bottles and stones as they closed in for the kill...
He was not aiming at the crowd, he said, but one shot appeared to have hit a Chinese student of about 17. Instead of taking him straight to hospital, however, the other students put him on a lorry and paraded him around the town for three hours, so that by the time he was brought there he was dead from a wound in the lung. Had he been taken to hospital directly, he might have been saved. But what was one life if another martyr could stoke up the fire of revolution?" ("The Singapore Story", page 203)

It is doubtful that any grassroots leader, however rabid his card-carrying convictions, is prepared to be martyred and paraded around Hong Lim Green. The collateral damage will have to be borne by somebody else. History will revisit this episode and determine if the YMCA is just another gullible partisan NGO.

November 22 is just round the corner, boon time for "Who Killed JKF" fans to rehash conspiracy theories. Vincent Bugliosi's 1,632 page "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F Kennedy" is the definitive volume to consult. Especially the details about the 26.6 second Zapruder film sequence shot by private citizen Abraham Zapruder with a home-movie camera. We have a grassy knoll too, ours is at the Hong Lim Green.

The Zapruder clip was an important part of the Warren Commission hearings and all subsequent investigations of the assassination, and is one of the most studied pieces of film in history. The 68 seconds captured on Saturday 27 may earn its place in our own history, it also deserves close scrutiny.

0:00/1:08: There's no time stamp, so we don't know when the march actually started but the EXIF metadata should still be available, embedded in the original video file. The gem of an idea for the walkabout must be traceable to one man's boast from the past, "People support CPF cuts because there are no protest (sic) outside parliament."

0:09/1:08: The marchers stop in front of an empty stage. Only one female is sighted, and she does not look, or move, like a Special Needs Child (SNC). A break in the event program begging to be filled.

0:20/1.08: This is the crucial start of the "heckle" video. The patriotic flag waving and the boisterous chant of "Return our CPF" dominate, and builds to a crescendo.

0:28/1.08: Watch the yellow T-shirt guy hustling the SNCs on stage, and exposing the vulnerable kids to the gathered crowd. He could have done better, choose instead to keep them off stage until the marchers have moved on, and save the SNCs from the NAR-rated spectacle. But E.Q. was never their strong point. Then again, he could have been performing to script. Nope, the cute baby can't be the traumatised kid Teo Ser Luck told the Straits Times about.

0:41/1:08: The SNCs get into the swing of their dance routine. Note the John Travolta wannabe waving his arms like it was Saturday Night Fever. His dance partner is jiving away happily, trying to keep pace with his vigorous lead. Still no sign of the traumatised kid. MP Teo really lucked out this time, he should be made to take a polygraph test. Maybe he was the kid who needed to be consoled, after one white haired senior citizen sat down next to him on the lawn, and gave him some fatherly advice, "limpeh kah loo kong, hor....."

0:57/1:08: This is it, this must be the epiphany. Suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Why the YMCA event was rescheduled to start later (from 10am to 4pm). Why the NParks director insisted the protest be limited to an obscure corner (the "grassy knoll"). Why the nameless mata-mata made a veiled threat about maintaining the peace. Why the YMCA Master of Ceremonies urged his supporters to taunt, "We love our CPF" - Yang Yin's "Come on, money, I love you" (来吧，钱，我爱你！) would not be out of place here. Why the SNCs are fronted on stage as Human Shields. That's when the marchers wisely moved on, before the rubber bullets are let fly and tear gas canisters lobbed.

Do we really care who shot JFK? Not really, all we are looking forward to is just desserts for Yang Yin and his foreign talent kind. And a good explanation why the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) is now turning on an 87 year old Singaporean and acting in favour of the tour guide from China. Why question Madam Chung's mental capacity to revoke the Lasting Power of Attorney? But that's another conspiracy theory in the making.

Leading Japanese daily, the Asahi Shimbun, has been forced into a series of embarrassing admissions over errors it published on the country’s Fukushima nuclear disaster and the use of sex slaves by Japanese troops during the Second World War. Asahi's president, Tadakazu Kimura, said that an internal investigation had found the Fukushima article to be incorrect. “We have caused significant damage to the trust our readers place in us,” he was quoted by the Guardian as saying. The revelations are set to send shock-waves, with dismissal of staff and reprimands promised by executive editor Nobuyuki Sugiura in the aftermath of the scandal. But Singapore is not Japan.

It was the Straits Times who first quoted Ang Mo Kio GRC MP Intan Azura Mokhtar as saying Yang Yin “is one of several [grassroots] leaders in Ang Mo Kio GRC helping foreigners integrate into society.” She quixotically added that Yang Yin “doesn’t hold a position” in the grassroots organisation. To make sense out of nonsense, the holder of a string of university degrees explained that she had described him as such because she considers all grassroots volunteers as “grassroots leaders.”

Then the paper quoted the People's Association as having confirmed that he had been a member of the neighbourhood committee since July 5 last year but resigned on Sept 8 this year. More confusing, on its volition, it chivalrously apologised for an error in reporting. Whether the error is about Yang Yin having held a position, having sent his resignation, or Intan's inability to discern volunteers from leaders, we are none the wiser.

It was the prime minister who first cast negative aspersions when he told student at a forum, "Do you (really) believe everything you read in the Straits Times?" But the perm sec who was made CEO of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) need not worry about his day job, so long as he remembers the old man's birthday. Chan was once described as "a Rafflesian who has crossed many boundaries" - Principal Private Secretary for LKY, Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Communications & IT and the Ministry of Transport - all of which had nothing to do with journalism.

There are two Susan Lims. She is the talented surgeon who performed the first successful liver transplant in Asian history in 1990. You can see her giving a TED talk on "Transplanting Cells, Not Organs" in April 2011, which has garnered 567,316 total views thus far. At the age of 36, Lim rose to the prestigious position of associate professor in surgery. Her hands have been replicated for display at Madame Tussaud's Exhibition, probably in recognition of her surgical skills.

And there's the Susan Lim who was convicted of professional misconduct in respect of overcharging one of her patients, the sister of the Queen of Brunei. She was fined $10,000 by the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) and suspended from practising for three years. The punishment is believed to be among the most severe meted out to an errant doctor, short of being struck off.

The story could have ended there. The law took its course, and the good doctor could have taken the time off for a period of self reflection and repentance.

Except for the ugly fact that SMC's lawyers proceeded to practise exactly they had argued against in court. After losing the case by SMC asserting that she had overcharged her wealthy Bruneian patient, Susan Lim ended up facing an over inflated bill to pay the SMC's costs. The irony can't get any better than this.

SMC's lawyers - Senior Counsel Alvin Yeo and Melanie Ho of WongPartnership (WongP) - overcharged by $637,009 (the difference between the original bill amount of $1.007 million and the $370,000 allowed by High Court Judge Woo Bih Li, who reviewed the matter, and eventually allowed that total sum for the bill of costs).

The latest development is that the court has slashed SMC's cost claims, and awarding the council only $317,000 of the $1.33m it was itching to collect. Examples of the overcharging include bills for two expert witnesses which were set at some $52,000, and slashed by the court to $14,000. Ring binders for which SMC had priced at $6 per unit for Dr Lim to pay were cut to $2.50 per unit after the court found it had used the cheaper version in past hearings. Greed knows no bounds.

The end is not yet in sight. When politicians get involved - and Alvin Yeo is a PAP MP - the muck takes forever to clear. Yang Yin did his homework well, he knew the Kodak moments with Lee Hsien Loong, Grace Fu and Intan Mokhtar will be worth more than the $4,000 he splurged for a fake degree.

The Ministry of Home Affairs hosted the 23rd GovernmentWare (GovWare) conference & exhibition event on 23 to 25 September 2014.

With the whipping boy of cyber threats in today's connected cyber world identified, the Government urged academia and industry partners to develop a close partnership which will enable such initiatives and measures as the sharing of information, development of innovative cyber solutions, training of the next generation of cyber security professionals and the establishment of local operational or research facilities. These and other "collaborative" efforts are supposed to aid in the shaping of a cyber security ecosystem that is both robust and vibrant.

One of the secret documents exposed by Edward Snowden was a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation explaining the function of PRISM, the program used impudently by the National Security Agency (NSA). The first to provide PRISM with material was Microsoft (September 2007), followed by Yahoo (March 2008), Google (January 2009), Facebook (June 2009), YouTube (September 2010), Skype (February 2011) and AOL (March 2011). Apple held out till October 2012. The top secret PRISM program allows the spy agency to access emails, Facebook posts and instant messages.

When challenged - Google prided itself on its mission statement "Don't do evil" - the tech companies said they only released information to NSA in response to a specific court order. It was only part of the story. In October 2013, the Washington Post revealed that NSA had hacked into the private fibre-optic links "on British territory" that inter-connect Yahoo and Google data centres worldwide. The NSA codename for the tapping operation is MUSCULAR, with the British doing the actual tapping on behalf of the US, and sending the data back to NSA's Fort Meade headquarters ("The Snowden Files", Luke Harding, page 206, 207). Snowden says it was his concerns over PRISM that pushed him towards whistleblowing.

What is pushing the government into all the talk about need for cyber security specialists is easy to guess. While George Bush had the Patriot Act to go by in the aftermath of 9/11, our great leader is paranoid about old geezers pining for home in a documentary movie. Transparency and accountability were never their goals, neither was the privacy of the citizens they are supposed to serve. Their invasive bags of dirty tricks makes the NSA rogue agents look like angelic forces.

We don't know what kind of company the prime minister keeps, but contrary to what he imagines, Singaporeans do know what ISIS and ISIL stands for. In case he still thinks cockles are served with mee siam, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is used by the U.S State Department as well as the United Nations since the group has more ambitious plans to extend their influence even beyond Iraq and Syria. We do know that Thailand - and India, and Indonesia - has a new head of state. Which begs the question why ours always has the same surname, except for the seat warming interlude when the in-house training had to be extended. So much about not knowing what's happening in the world beyond the little red dot.

Maybe he prefers the company of sycophantic grassroots leaders like foreign talent like Yang Yin, who rarely bring up the shortcomings of housing, transport and healthcare. Which explains why they are always thinking of spending more of our money in China. Quoting Tencent as example of an IT company in China is unfortunate, it reminds one of Ibu Tien a.k.a. Madam Ten Percent, the rapacious wife of Suharto who demanded a cut of every major construction contract.

And why are we so palsy walsy with the commies? Didn't they once upon a time undermined the national security of our young nation, same reason offered for banning Tan Pin Pin's award winning "To Singapore, With Love"? If movies, specifically pseudo-documentaries are so bad, why did they air those fairy tales about the Laju incident, Maria Hertogh affair, Hock Lee bus riots, etc on the television screen?

And there's this mega film project beginning pre-production this month with principal photography starting in November. Supported by the Media Development Authority of Singapore under the Production Assistance Scheme, "1965" will be operating on a budget of $2.8 million. "It’s not a biopic of Mr Lee Kuan Yew. It’s not a political film nor a propaganda film. It’s not a docu-drama. It’s not a movie about the independence of Singapore," explained Daniel Yun, executive producer of the "SG50 celebration film". Spending millions on a film which is not a film. Whatever they are drunk on, it must be potent stuff.

"You watch the movie, you think it's a documentary. It may be Fahrenheit 9/11, very convincing, but it's not a documentary", said Lee. Maybe he forgot his cameo appearance in "Inside Job", the 2010 Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature about the late-2000s financial crisis which was directed by Charles H. Ferguson. Some of the lines were damn convincing.

Businessman Lim Soo Seng was fined the maximum S$10,000 for “unreasonably omitting” to bring his female cross-breed dog to the vet for treatment. Under the present Animals and Birds Act, anyone convicted of animal cruelty can be fined up to S$10,000 or jailed for up to a year or both.

Members of Parliament have now tabled a bill to amend the Animals and Birds Act to propose harsher penalties for those convicted of acts of animal cruelty. A person convicted for animal cruelty for the first time can now be fined up to S$40,000 and/or jailed up to two years. Subsequent offenders can be fined up to S$100,000 and/or jailed up to three years, if the law makers have their way with the proposed changes.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) thinks Lim has been let off easy and has appealed to the Attorney-General’s Chambers for a heavier sentence - lock the bugger up and throw the key away. Which means somebody else will have to house and feed the three other toy dogs belonging to Lim. Looking at the horrific picture of the dog that died, another body may even suggest that Lim be put out of his misery.

Quite obviously, dog lovers are getting a bit overboard here.

Especially when you consider how our senior citizens have hardly been given a fair shake after years of toil. When MOE scholar Sun Xu - who objected to some seniors looking his way - said "there are more dogs than humans" in Singapore, he wasn't paying us a compliment. In one particular poll, 39 per cent of respondents felt the punishment meted to him was too lenient - his scholarship was terminated, and he was required to pay back about $8,200 for the first tranche of the semester’s scholarship benefits - while 35 per cent said they were too little, too late. It was too late to save the canine's life, but is it too late to come to the aid of seniors trying to access their CPF?

Telling It Like It Is

ICA's Hot Potato

Rotten Apples And Rotting Fruit

Forgive Is Not An Option

如斯好德如好色的人

Thrown Out To Dry

Best Left Unseen, Unheard, Unread

Talking Big

Foreigner Bashing

Slow Mail Costs More

A Bum Deal

The Plot Thickens

Who Do You Trust?

Suffer The Little Children

Our Very Own Zapruder Clip

Significant Damage To Readers' Trust

Double Standards

The War On Secrets

Watch His Lips

It's A Dog's Life After All