SINGAPORE – A 40-year-old man was sentenced to a year’s jail today for stealing S$32. -Today online, 20 Jan 2012

If I may, an advice for the govt: If you want this person not to steal again,  consider giving him a job and consider a law for minimum wages. Consider putting him and his handicapped mother on some long term financial help scheme until his release and able to secure a proper job with decent wages.

(Wait a minute what am I talking… in fact we already have a minimum wage policy, but it is only restricted to Ministers!)

The law may want to punish offenders to discourage crime, even petty ones, even disproportionately, but a RESPONSIBLE AND CARING GOVT would see to it that his dependents, his handicapped mother, is not punished also for the son’s crime. Allowing his mum to suffer the son’s consequences is like saying she deserved to be punished also for the son’s wrong doing. Is that justice? She is like the infamous Americanism known as ‘co-lateral damage’.

Would the opposition party please bring it up in parliament, for a law that would make it responsible, based on the merits of each case, for govt helping agencies to come in to render help? To those who think that this is like encouraging people to offend, please consider the circumstances and the fact that the affected person is not a criminal but a citizen who has a right to be help based purely on his/her plight.  In ancient China and other countries too, the whole extended family got the chop, quite literally! But, we are not ancient anymore, are we?

Would the mosque accept a donation on behalf of his mother from members of the public who want to help the old lady? The man has committed a crime and is paying for it, whatever the mosque’s view – and I do respect it’s view as someone who believe in a multi-racial and multi-religious society – would it be willing to be a party of any effort to help the mother, who has become a true victim of circumstances?

Happy Lunar New Year!

And if the hat fits, a prosperous one, as well.

 

On 21 May 2011, barely two weeks after the 7 May 2011 GE, I shared my doubts on the issue of Ministers’ Pay and How Genuine Is PM Lee About Making Changes?, in the following blog.

 http://thetwophilo.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/indeed-can-they-be-trusted-early-misgivings/

There is NO COMFORT indeed to see that I am proven, in the presently unfolding event, to be  right, although I would dearly love to be proven wrong.

 But, sigh… the best is yet to be, for our country!

For access to the rest of my blogs, please go to this link: http://thetwophilo.wordpress.com/

The Marina Barrage is the apparent pride and joy of Mr Lee, senior. Justifiably so too, but one wonders if it is possible at all for you, as the minister in charge now, to take a good and careful look at this huge project to see if certain ‘small’ issues had been left out, ‘lost’ inadvertently, in the midst of the hundreds perhaps thousands of details that must surely have gone into its planning, study, design and eventual construction?

I ask because from the freely available literature on the Internet on the subject of hydraulic structures and their constructions, including barrages, there is this mention of ‘AFFLUX’ which is defined by one source as:

“Afflux

The rise in maximum flood level of the river upstream of the barrage as a result of its construction is defined as Afflux. Afflux, though confined in the beginning to a short length of the river above the barrage, extends gradually very far up till the final slope of the river upstream of the barrage is established.”   – Design of Barrage – How to – Criteria for Design of barrage

Quote 1 (Click to enlarge)

(www.enggpedia.com/civil-engineering-encyclopedia/articles/1779-design-of-barrage )

And others:

Afflux Bunds

Quote 2 (Click to enlarge)

Afflux, Flooding, Operation of Barrage Gates and Afflux Bunds

Quote 3 (Click to enlarge)

It really is all highly involved and technical stuff.

I can clearly recall during the early days of the Great Orchard Road flood several months back the PUB discounting what some netizens have blogged about the possibility of the Marina Barrage having a ‘hand’ in the flood. According to the PUB then, Stamford Canal/Orchard Road is too far (upstream) to be affected by the Barrage. Netizens pointed out the fact that the recent flooding started only AFTER the Barrage was commissioned. To any layman (like me, and others) the coincidence is simply hard to dismiss as, well, coincidental! The significance of Quote 1 is the possibility therefore that afflux caused by the Barrage structure can cause water levels to rise throughout the drainage/waterway system, including the Stamford Canal, draining into the reservoir formed by the construction of the Barrage. The impounded water could also have effectively raised the levels of the waterways (and the water table) and correspondingly reduced their abilities to hold more water in a heavy downpour.

In two of the above quotes, what caught my attention also was the mention of a need to build Afflux bunds to help cope with keeping water from overflowing the banks of the river in the event of a ‘design’ high flood level situation and above.

My question, was this taken into consideration by the PUB in the construction of the Barrage? In any case, would it had been possible to build the bunds (or their equivalent) for the Stamford Canal even if the PUB had wanted to, given the limiting factor that the entire length of the canal runs underground beneath the road surface – down Orchard Road to Stamford Road to Raffles Avenue, before turning south and emptying into Marina Bay? Seen in this light, the flooding of Orchard Road appears inevitable.

The minister is spot on when he admitted recently that the Stamford Canal has already reached its maximum capacity. Perhaps, he may want to consider looking into the possibility that the  Barrage might just be responsible for ‘prematurely’ hastening this. Should he also prematurely rule out the possibility that  modifying the operation of the Barrage might just have a role in the overall solution to the Orchard Road flooding?

P.S. Additional Comments.

Is it not possible for instance to verify this by opening all the gates at the Barrage to allow maximum unimpeded water flow to the sea (to the extent possible with the Barrage structure already in situ)  so as to roughly simulate ‘pre-Barrage’ days conditions?  The severity and any occurrences of flooding when it rains can be tracked and the results later compared with flood and deluge data gathered earlier. The tracking should be over a reasonable period during which some comparably heavy rainfall must have fallen to enable some realistic comparison to be made. Such indirect empirical data  may be one way to obtain some indications of whether there is or isn’t an issue as far as the Barrage is concerned.  Is the idea feasible? If it does help to remove some doubts, why not give it a go? As the Barrage is something we got to live with, one way or another, we should know, and we better know.

 - inserted 4 Jan 12, 11.30 pm  

Just my two pebbles’ worth.

Click for a bigger picture.

In retrospect, the immediate response of DOING NOTHING by the train drivers when the trains stalled strongly suggests a CONDITIONING of the minds of SMRT staff by the recurrence of such incidences.

Such inactions are a telling sign of SMRT employees ‘getting used’ to the idea that such occurrences are to be expected! What probably passed through their minds was to just sit still and wait for the electricity to come back on (just like ‘last time’?) or an order or instruction from their superiors of what action to take next (again, just like the last time!).

This sad little scenario is pregnant with the following ‘classics’:

Classic 1 – A creeping Pavlovian conditioning of the SMRT management and staff TO ACCEPT such disruptions or stoppages as ROUTINE.

The CEO’s, Ms Saw, much publicized INDIFFERENT, even curt and blase responses and inactions to previous similar occurrences and issues have only helped to lure her subordinates, up and down the metaphorical and literal, line, into a complacent state of mind. (If the boss who should know more about what’s going on is not worried, why should you be?)

SUCH AN OPERATING ENVIRONMENT IS NOT UNLIKE THAT OF A FROG SITTING QUIETLY IN A POT OF WATER THAT IS SLOWLY BUT STEADILY HEATING UP. THE SLOW, EVEN IMPERCEPTIBLE HEATING, HAS ALLOWED THE FROG TO ‘ACCLIMATISE’ TO THE STEADILY BUT INCREASINGLY HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT – I.E. COMPLACENCY SETS IN AS IT IS EASY ENOUGH TO HAVE TO DO NOTHING BUT WAIT FOR FURTHER ORDERS. BUT, WHEN THE FROG FINALLY FEELS THE REAL HEAT, THE PAIN, IT IS TOO LATE TO HOP OUT; IT HAS ALREADY BECOME THREE-QUARTER DONE FROG SOUP!

Click for a bigger picture.

Classic 2 – When the means becomes the end.

This is a common, even rampant, governing style of the Singapore Govt – that of an initial action arising from some RATIONAL decision made AT THE BEGINNING with the best and most noble of intentions being subsequently USURPED, HIJACKED, SIDE-TRACKED, SUBVERTED AND COMMANDEERED for opportunistic purposes (in this case, bottom line gains, or simply, greed). At the expense of the RAISON DETRE AND ORIGINAL BRIEF for the development and building of a mass rapid transport network to serve the country and citizens’ commuting need, the creation of a series of underground retail outlets spanning the system, ostensibly to defray cost, have apparently taken a momentum and created a priority and life all its own that it even comes close to eclipsing the very source that makes the retail outlets feasible in the first place. Much like a monster poised to swallow up its own parents?

(Other (too) familiar examples of ‘money spinners’ are of course, GST, parking charges, COE and the ERP, not to mention big ticket items like HDB housing.)

The CEO and the Board must have been patting themselves on the back for the huge bottom line gains generated from the rental of retail space within the rail network’s stations. IN A NUTSHELL, THEY HAVE BEEN SIDE-TRACKED into focusing on the wrong ball in an attempt to shine.

To be sure it is not wrong to exploit opportunities that come along the way – like the mangoes on a tree that overhangs into a public road, there for the picking. The huge mistake appears to be that they have embraced such incidental opportunities with BOTH HANDS OFF THE STEERING WHEEL!

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Classic 3 – When Royalties get into the picture, Farmers or Eunuch acts only to preserve their own positions and rice bowls, and NOT THE STATUS QUO, NOT WHAT THEY HAVE BEEN PAID TO REALLY DO.

Do I need to elaborate, say more on this?

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Classic 4 – This flows partly from Classic 1 AND Classic 3. It is CONDITIONED GROUP THINK. It is ‘received wisdom’ in Singapore that if you want to go anywhere or get anywhere or even just to maintain your position in govt or govt related or linked organizations, you have BETTER to put on your GROUPTHINKING CAP!

It is because rewards can be handsome, very handsome, depending on your position and ambition, and where principles are cheap and not legal tender – the latter won’t fill your stomach nor get you your next new car or your dream condo – that there are many willing and able to sell their principles for the highest price.

For those at the lowest or lower rungs of the pecking order, such as the drivers and maintenance crew members, abiding by  ‘groupthinking’  is also essential for survival and even a lower living cost. For starters, their vocations would at least provide free or subsidized SMRT travels for themselves and possibly their immediate family members. And at the rate the Public Transport Council (PTC) is condoning and approving fare increases, year after year after year, irrespective of service quality or otherwise,  this is a consideration not to be sneezed at!

Click for a bigger picture.

 

The following was from a letter by one Dr Yow Wei Quin in the Forum of the ST today (12 Dec 2011):

“  Here are a few suggestions:
Start as early as possible: Language learning is best carried out before age three. Currently, we are focusing our efforts from age seven, which is too late.

Address parents’ fear that exposing children to multiple languages early will confuse them and reduce their ability to master English, thus affecting their academic results; research shows this to be unfounded.

Change the way language is taught in early childhood: Adults learn a language like a subject. Children do not.

Mr Lee aptly wrote: ‘When it comes to learning a language, you have to start young, preferably as a toddler when the brain is at its most absorptive and retentive.’

Dr Yow Wei Quin “

We seem to have a society where lots of people think nothing of hitching free rides on someone else’s power and fame so as to draw attention to themselves. IMO, Dr Yow appears to be one such person.

In her letter which you can read here - http://www.straitstimes.com/STForum/Story/STIStory_743938.html, she tried to re-package what must be plainly, and obviously hackneyed, bromidic (though fundamentally true) motherhood statements on this issue and made it sound like some newly inspired gem of a holy grail. Why, she even cleverly sandwiched what she wants to say between Lee at top and bottom. It cannot be any safer!

But, let us look at what Lee, who has been spewing lots of his thoughts and statements on Mandarin learning lately, has said this time round in his latest book. According to Yow, who quoted him at the bottom of her forum letter:

Mr Lee aptly wrote: ‘When it comes to learning a language, you have to start young, preferably as a toddler when the brain is at its most absorptive and retentive.’

Now, tell me which self-respecting pediatrician, speech therapist, neurolinguist, speech trainer, and other allied professionals don’t already know that? And why is Lee saying all that now, not forgetting that he has been experimenting, directing and overseeing decisions that have far-reaching consequences and which have affected and are still affecting millions of Singaporeans on this issue for FOUR decades?

A ground breaking discovery or even a keen observation it obviously is not, what he has said. But it most definitely smacks of yet another subtle attempt at blame-pushing which is so characteristic of his ‘murmurs’ nowadays. Does he ever feel guilty at all about, anything?

BUT IT IS QUITE OBVIOUS THAT LEE’S LATEST ‘GOD-SPEAK’ ON THE MATTER WAS NOT A PART OF HIS YESTERYEARS’ WISDOM.

The real yesteryears’ variety of his god-speak on this matter manifested itself in the form of many thousands of students becoming quite completely ALIENATED by the method and manner Mandarin learning was forced down their throats in schools, with thousands of these many thousands later leaving for foreign shores, at heavy financial expenses to their parents, for a chance to obtain higher qualifications THAT HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THEIR PROFICIENCY OR LACK IN SPEAKING AND WRITING MANDARIN!

SO, LEE KEEPS ON ‘UPDATING’ HIMSELF AND IS THEREFORE NEVER WRONG! (OR, IF YOU ARE A FAWNING ACOLYTE, ‘ALWAYS RIGHT’; SLIPPERY, AS SOME WOULD SAY.) WHAT WITH WRITING A BOOK WHICH IS WITH GREAT ALACRITY OBSEQUIOUSLY QUOTED FROM BY THE LIKES OF YOW, LEE’S LEGACY ON THIS ISSUE IS PROTECTED MOST ASSUREDLY BY WHAT HE NOW DECIDES TO SAY IN HIS BOOK .

Sometimes we have to wonder where is the justice in all this?! And where it is all leading to?

One last point.

It is easy, far too easy, to prescribe ‘WHAT’ to do, like in Yow’s ‘suggestions’. In my book, with due respect, they are a dime a dozen as far as this issue is concerned. The DEVIL is in ‘HOW’ these and any other suggestions can be effectively and realistically translated/implemented into effective and efficacious policies to achieve the desired results given the realities on the ground now and also in the past.

A Chinese saying describes the situation here best:

To indulge in military manoeuvre and strategy on paper (纸上谈兵 – zhǐshàngtánbīng – fig. theoretical discussion that is worse than useless in practice / armchair strategist / idle theorizing ). And that’s what has been going on for far, far too long on this issue.

The metaphoric broth has already been spoilt beyond redemption by Lee and the underlings who report to him on this issue – and I don’t mean the MOE alone, there was a collective failure in responsibility reaching down from cabinet, to MOE, to grass root leaders. None, it would seem have the courage of conviction even if they have an alternative view to offer.

It is easy to say that parents should be doing this and that, but how many parents in present day Singapore (or in the past) are effectively bilingual to start with for this idea to work? How many families now are not dual income in order to maintain a decent standard of living? Who would be minding the kids, let alone cooing into their impressionable ‘plastic’ ears sweet nothing in M? Get real. Where are the policies, for instance, that would mandate a 3-year ‘paid sabbatical’ for at least one parent to temporary shelf her/his work ambitions to bring to fruition Lee’s and Yow’s grand strategy of Mandarinization of Chinese Singaporeans?

One craves to see the Singapore govt puts its money where its mouth is, for once.

My family recently became volunteer community cat lovers and through it we learn some great lessons about love and care for our fellow creatures whose plights are absolutely no fault of theirs. Through caring and feeding them we learnt that like people cats do have their own personalities and characteristics, and they can be so very loveable and likeable creatures. We also learnt how terribly FRIGHTEN and COLD cats, esp. kittens, can become in the midst of a roaring thunderstorm out in the open , taking refuge under a car or in a wind and rain swept void deck!

Watching a starving and thirsty homeless cat ravenously and gladly lapping up the simple food and water you bring is, without exaggeration, a very edifying moment for us.

Responsible community cat lovers would ensure that their ‘charges’ are properly treated at the vet’s – spayed or sterilised, de-ticked/de-fleaed etc. And the treatment/medication can be quite costly.

Cats are discreet creatures and have good toilet habits – they do their business, as far as possible, in a grass patch away from common passage/path ways, and they even try to cover up their poop wherever possible by throwing dirt or vegetation over it!

Community cat lovers/feeders have to be really quite responsible and helpful people. Responsible care giving includes clearing and/or cleaning the area after feeding, and making sure they are fed only properly prepared cat food -from the pet shop or supermarket shelves – and the occasional treat of freshly steamed fish. Gently stroking/massaging the fur would help to calm a nervous or warm a frigid cat on a stormy night.

Community cat lovers/feeders are volunteers who have willingly gone out of their way, incurring time and expenses, ‘on behalf’ of those owners who have irresponsibly discarded their pets. The issue of strays would not exist if they have acted more responsibly towards their pets and the community.

He said this is largely driven by civil servants who formulated and justified policies with facts and figures to convince the ministers to get them approved.

He added not much of the ground input was considered.” – Inderjit Singh, at PAP Convention, as reported by CNA

But, it is for once, a little refreshing and nice for Singaporeans to hear a govt MP daring to confirm, albeit at a rather inconsequential and ‘safe’ venue and occasion, what must have been pretty obvious and well known to even the most apathetic, apolitical citizen, regarding the PAP’s governing style of top-down aka forced-down-your-throat policies, policy changes and edits. Everytime, it would be put across as bitter medicine ‘for your own good’ – measures that invariably trash our RIGHTS and deplete our POCKETS.

Mr Singh, many Singaporeans would be more impressed, more convinced, and feel that you are being more sincere, if you would only dare to repeat those same words IN PARLIAMENT, itself, and get them debated by your fellow MPs.

It would be truly groundbreaking then!

That, IMO, Mr Singh, would be a greater measure of the real man in you and your colleagues.

The Battle Ground

If LHL really meant what he said and if we want to hold him and his govt to his words, there is but only ONE course of action and requirement that would do! It is namely the timely release of info and data to Singaporeans.

What do I mean? Well, the govt and the civil service as a matter of routine procedure plan WAY AHEAD -something the general public hears about now is more than likely to have been on the govt’s drawing board years ago, even decades, if it is some long term plan.

Don’t believe me? Well, the Bukit Brown road is a case in point – how many people had even paused to think when it was first announced that the circle line includes a stop at Bukit Brown?

Obviously, you don’t build facilities or plan for it unless there is a foreseen need for ‘it’. The ‘BB’ station is certainly not meant for some ‘ghoulish’ travel plan for some of our forefathers long interred there! Now, that brings to mind too the Bidadari Cemetery, viz., its Circle Line station’s (Woodleigh) eventual and subsequent opening recently and before that the mass exhumation. It’s truly a wonder that all such events and issues didn’t ring (ALARM) bells at the time they should, when first publicly announced! Truly, Singaporeans must be terribly so busy, so focused on making a living and other stiffs, oops, I mean stuffs. Why are interest/interested groups and individuals only just now making what sometimes seems to be rather obsequious and disingenuous noises about the looming excavation at Bukit Brown, just another one of our ancestral burial grounds that is the latest in the ‘series’ to ‘go’? .

The question any thinking person should ask is: Why didn’t all those apparently concerned parties or individuals raise ‘hell’ about the issue long ago, much earlier when it was staring them right in their faces? So, can the public take their ‘noises’ now, at face value or seriously? Or, are some in civil society such pathetic thinkers that they can’t see or project the ‘rocket’ coming their way?

Or, is it all about making an APPEARANCE or feigning concern for their respective target audiences? That’s cowardly, IMO, knowing full well the futility, and in the process, hiding their own sorely emasculated bargaining power vis a vis the govt.

In particular, I have doubts about the sincerity or authenticity of the Taoist association’s suddenly resurrected concern. What is the intention of ex-TOC’s Andrew Loh’s timely blog replete with pictures (at least one of which IMO requires some forensic skills and equipment to restore which I am surprised he has access to) and researched details about the grave of an ancestor of LKY and LHL?

President Tony Tan has acknowledged that it is a ‘blunt’ instrument in a televised public debate with his fellow-Elected President candidates. And he is right.

Figuratively speaking, the ISA is like a gun. It has potential for both good and evil.

In the correct hands, it is an important tool for defence, to safeguard our security and well being.

In the wrong hands its potential for bad, abuse and harm, is just as great.

It is the reason for pulling the trigger and not the presence or possession of the gun per se that is at the heart of the issue.

To use a cowboy town analogy, popular of late, it is like the sheriff of a town. He can either do good – arresting all the bad guys – or he can do bad – using his powers to put behind bars all those who has aspiration for his job, or anyone whose faces he simply don’t like.

So, what both proponents and opponents of ISA should grapple with is how to create an operating environment that would at the same time ensure our security and keep in check its potential for abuse. In practice, we have seen instances of both.

The ISA – the law and the procedure dictating its use and operation – as it stands, cannot remain unchanged or unmodified. Using the same gun analogy, it needs to be fitted with a more accurate aiming sight – to be pin-point accurate like a laser-guided weapon, and not like an old fashioned blunderbuss which maims all and sundry in the wake of its shotgun-like blasts. And in its operation, there needs to be stringent independent measures to ensure that its continued application in any one particular instance of use continues to be justified.

There should also be concomitant laws, providing specifics of how all detainees are to be treated, their human rights safeguarded; their conditions monitored by an independent body.

If the motives and intentions of the govt is honourable and aboveboard, nothing is impossible. The twain can meet. It is both possible to safeguard our national security and have effective measures implemented to prevent its abuse.

It is like fighting corruption; we must be able to escape its corrupting influence or else we are no better than that which we claim to fight.

Last but not least, the law in whatever form it takes, must be made subject to periodic reviews. The onus lies with the govt to present its case in details to parliament – to be heard in camera, if applicable – for the latter to re-endorse it, or when deemed necessary by a majority, order a review, as the case may be.

During the recent TOC’s Face To Face 2 forum, TT attempted to justify the govt’s infamous arrest of RC church workers and volunteers in the late 1980s by comparing them – the victims of the govt’s alleged “Marxist plot” who were arrested and tortured while being interrogated, and detained without trial by the ISD – to a crazed Norwegian man named, Breivik, who recently set off bombs in the Norwegian capital city of Oslo which took the lives of many innocent people. He then made his way to a Norwegian island resort and there killed even more people with lethal automatic weapons. Over seventy youths who were attending a camp there, died.

To think that so many innocent young lives died so tragically in that incident at the hands of a psychopathic gunman, yet TT made an invidious and completely outrageous and unjustifiable choice of comparing and attempting to draw a parallel between the alleged Marxist plot of the detainees and this Norwegian mass murderer! TT’s rationale is beyond me.

Once again, it rings clearly and loudly how fond he is of insulting our intelligence! By conflating the alleged Marxist plot and the Norway killings, TT has by doing this committed a well known error of Equivalence Fallacy.*

How could Tony Tan in good conscience transport a mass arrest by the ISD, almost 25 years ago, of a group of young idealistic Singaporean Christian do-gooders who were helping and advocating for some lowly educated foreign workers caught in straitened circumstances and accused them of plotting against the country, and juxtaposed it against this recent calculated and cold-blooded murderous acts of a psychopath?

Would that not suggest the existence of extreme (and worrying) mindsets in the highest reaches of our govt? Whether TT did it on purpose or out of sheer ignorance, or even perhaps, he just ‘don’t know what (else) to say’, it certainly exposed how truly little he really thought about or cared for the human and legal rights of others whose lives and careers have been so severely and unjustly violated and ruined by the shotgun methods and actions of a notoriously paranoid govt.

By his callous remarks he has deepened the wounds and drawn fresh blood. Members of the group detained by the ISD for the alleged ‘Marxist Conspiracy’ are now being referred to by some as former ‘terrorists’!

This, at a time when many of the ex-detainees (victims, really of state terrorism#) are seeking some form of closure and vindication for a cruel injustice inflicted on them so scandalously, which all but completely demolished their lives and reputations for good, by a govt seized by paranoia. For it has remained up to this day a shameful UNPROOFED allegation the purported harm they were supposedly plotting towards govt and people of Singapore.

You be the judge. Did Tony Tan answer the question posed by the MURUAH representative in good faith? His non-answer only confirms in any neutral and fair-minded person who are acquainted with the case the obvious guilt that the govt feels, but refused to acknowledge for reasons of face and, as one EP candidate put it, a lack of a ‘moral compass’.

By choosing to reply the way he did, he has once again confirmed that he is an unapologetic PAP leopard who has no desire to change its spots. Voting him into office can only mean more of the same Nathan-crap that we have seen for the past 12 years! No, TT would be far worse. At least the incumbent could play deaf-and-dumb as he has no secrets and a dubious track-record at stake to hide, unlike TT.

Far, far from unifying the country, IMO, TT would be at the centre of an even more divisive and controversial Elected Presidency than the outgoing incumbent.

The booing has already started. Should we be too surprised if he is to ‘score’ a ‘first’ of being publicly heckled? However, I do not expect slippers or shoes to fly his way, for that is not in the nature of the local cultures. We are actually more civilized and quite disciplined, even if our govt isn’t.
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Definitions:
#The Encyclopædia Britannica Online defines terrorism generally as “the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective”, and states that “terrorism is not legally defined in all jurisdictions.” The encyclopedia adds that “establishment terrorism, often called state or state-sponsored terrorism, is employed by governments — or more often by factions within governments — against that government’s citizens, against factions within the government, or against foreign governments or groups.”

…Stohl clarifies, however, that “not all acts of state violence are terrorism. It is important to understand that in terrorism the violence threatened or perpetrated, has purposes broader than simple physical harm to a victim. The audience of the act or threat of violence is more important than the immediate victim.“

*Equivalence Fallacy
An Equivalence Fallacy is the error of defining distinct and conflicting items in similar terms, thus equating two items that are not, in fact, equal.

Someone who suggests that one act of serious wrongdoing does not differ from a minor offence commits the fallacy of moral equivalence.
**

Additional note:

Transcript of the answer given by Tony Tan to the question posed by Muruah, the Singapore Human Rights Group, on the ISD arrest and detention of the ‘Marxists conspiracy’ detainees in 1987-89:

Muruah: Roles and power of the president…specifically my question is on the ISA. And it’s directed to all the candidates. So, the president actually plays a very important role in relation to detention of persons under the ISA, and based on all the evidences today, do you think the detention of the so-called Marxist conspirators of 1987 was justified? And if not, how would you improve the transparency and legitimacy of the detention process, if you are the president?

TT: The case that you were referring to the detention of the Marxists I think took place from 87 to 89. At that time, I was minister for education. This case was very carefully discussed in cabinet and as you know, cabinet discussions are confidential. They are covered under the official secrets act. So I am not able to tell you about actually what was discussed. But, what I can say is in my view, the ISA is a very blunt instrument which should only be used in the most extreme circumstances when the govt feels it really have got no choice.

T…t..t terrorism is a fact of life today, and you know it is with us, and I don’t think there is any point in trying to disguise that, and it comes in many forms. Not only with regards to one sector of society but from sectors of society of countries which you never thought this would happen.

Look at Norway. Somebody, Anders Breivik I think from the Christian Far Right set of a series of bombs, took a gun, killed over 90 people, but would you believe that could happen in Norway from the Christian Far Right? The fact of terrorism is with us. I was coordinating minister for security and defence, and I could deal with this over a wide front. This is modern life. We have to wake up. It can happen anywhere. Tough decisions would have to be made, unpleasant steps have to be taken, but that’s life. And I tell you this, if it can happen in Norway, the most stable middle class affluent society that you can imagine, in my view, it can happen anywhere.

Viswa: Thank You
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