Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:
Er yah, it took you that long to figure it out did you? Or are you as usual opposing for the sake of opposing?
Rather. Its because you claimed
Instead, they placed economic development on the top priority with development of society a far distance third or fourth, if it was even ever on the list..
I chose to address your claim directly, and then addressed your intent second.
Tell me now, has it failed to occur to you that education in those days weren't too developed and that a lot of the people of that generation weren't particularly well-educated? Or has the statistics flown you by? Or you haven't seen first hand school dropouts in the army? Or you forgotten the fact that the Army used to have entire companies of hokkien speaking people who are still alive today and most likely jobless?
Ahem. You claim that not enough was done to keep students in school, especially the poor ones. Your basis for that claim?
What use is an O' level cert these days? Or has it not occurred to you that many of the people who were permanently unemployed had an O' Level cert or less?
Now.During the seventies, an O level English WAS good enough, allowing you to enter clerical services.
Mind then can you explain how the Cubans developed a significant Biotech R&D sector or the Israelis for that matter (Aside from the fact that the average Israeli is probably smarter than the average Singaporean, judging from the level of innovation)? The Cubans are even more ironic since they had little access to important raw materials for even a significant manufacturing industry. Could it have been done? Probably? Did I condemn the maturation of the economy? Who's the strawmaning moron now? The manufacturing sector was obviously necessary, but were attempts made with eye to the future? Obviously NOT.
And you're making errorneous claims as usual. Do you even know what
A*STAR is?
Are you even aware of the level of engineering and research going on in chemical and yard work? Not to mention Creative soundcards in the nineties? Hey, let's stick to innovative? Oh Yes. Osim... F&B? Yeo's drink, Yar Kun and even Klinney.
The irony is that you're claiming that the Singaporean government hasn't created a magical R&D and other enterprises out of scratch. Yet, the main complaint by others is that by locking up expertise, the government is denying private enterprise the ability to conduct their own R&D.
Considering that PM Goh has been harping on the need to go global and praising Creative as the ultimate entrepreneurs and research genius since 1995, you're obviously full of shit as usual.
How is this a red herring when I was being more specific about my complaints? Or are you looking for cheap feeble points as usual? All the attempts at R&D in the 90s were so pathetic, that Thomson ISI rated Singapore in the order of the 92nd in 2004 in terms of citations per paper, excluding self-citations:
http://www.newsintercom.org/index.php?itemid=288 (THe old url for the list is dead or not free, but this post preserved the contents of the statistic.)
Nice goalpost shifting. First you complain that nobody cared about R&D and innovation, now, you complain that the government attempts sucked so badly that its ineffective.And your measure of effectiveness is citations per paper?
What about actual products and ideas? Hey, maybe we shouldn't just point to NavyField ja?
So... the past and the present relate how now? And er, where did the bribes come in? Last I checked, I didn't even write anything related, much less alluded to bribery.
Ahem.
The single minded focus on jobs and economy, though it bore fruits on which the PAP continues to coast along on those fruits, it failed to nurture a society that was more vocal and more willing to challenge societal norms. Instead, they allowed Lee Kuan Yew to pursue his own vendetta against the Communists, going so far as locking some of them for decades.
As for the past and present, are you daft? Without any prevalent means of opposition, new means and methods had to be created from scratch. The internet is only just one of the new ways of presenting differing opinions, with alternative media finding more room to express itself outside the ST forums, which are biased and limited by editor choice. With more "free space", the highly censored means of MP sessions,letter feedback and ST forums was blasted open. But even so, its still a trickle and its still being developed. While many civil rights organisations such as AWARE has been in existence for decades, it has also been until the nineties where the presence of more media had allowed them more opportunities to educate and present their dissenting views.
And Big Business? Yeah, given how the Government is so pro-business, is that supposed to be a surprise? Or am I supposed to grovel? Where is the people's voice now? Aside in some secluded corner of the web in some forum hosted in an overseas server?
Your point being? Stop with the sniping and address the issue. Its clear you agree that the only community which emerged with its voice intact.... had the biggest say in politics.
Certainly no guerrilla war was fought, else it would have been bloody obvious there was a war on our hands. If it was to do with Bomb making, how blowing up buildings would win the people over to the Communists is beyond me. Mind you, the Communists in Singapore were working towards more of destabilizing the Government, and forcing the current Government to step down. By and large, their motives were largely to achieve it through political means. Protests and what not were merely to pressure the Government to bow to their demands.
The only reason why militant action was directly ruled out, is because Chin Peng had advocated the revision of the MCP policy while in Perak. The failure of armed insurgency was clear back then in the 60s, and his new directives of taking the fight to politics was slowly distributed down the MCP command chain. It was too late to affect the Emergency in general, but it revived their political organisations in the cities by redirecting attention there.
Which part of it was false position, when I suggested a scenario? Or did the word "scenario" suddenly disappear from the dictionary?
Ahem.
Have you considered that the history was written by the victors? You are mistaking righteousness for ambition.
Where did I say the Communists weren't actively taking power?
Correction. I should had stated, that you assumed their actions to take power was not threatening to Singapore position, both externally and internally.
My entire gist of the argument has been from the start that the PAP grossly inflated the communist threat and that LKY has been a manipulative bastard coveting power from the start, going in so far as colluding with the communists just to gain power to pursue his own agenda, and then pursuing a vendetta after they opposed him and abandoned their erstwhile alliance.
Actually, LKY abandoned the alliance and turned on the Communists so as to prove to the British and the Tunku that Singapore was fit to join Malaysia. If you read his memoirs as well as the Tunku own statements, the existence of the Communist faction in the PAP was one of the major barriers against entry towards Malaysia, a pet goal for the PAP. As for grossly inflating the communist threat, you're looking at the endpoint of 1 decade of Malayan Emergency, a war in everything save name when Coldplay was initiated.
Agreed, though obviously it wasn't enough to stop them from bombing that building.
And you don't know how many other bombs were disarmed. I had the opportunity to train under one of the SCE bomb experts who served during that time. He gave us examples of what occured back then.
My argument thus far, has been that the anti-communist action has been excessive, hence why I disagreed with the 30 year house arrest imposed on many ex-Barisan Socialist members.
What 30 year house arrest members? There has only been 1 person who got that treatment. The majority got detained for a couple of years and were either deported or then released back into Society. Was it unfair? Certainly.
Quite frankly, it could be well proven that they intended to stirr up trouble and as I understand it, inciting riots was a chargeable offence. If you are going stop the violence, at least do it in the context of the law and not some act that allows one to bypass the law. If there is a need to charge with treason, then damn hell do it. The ISA should not be, and should never be used as a legal short cut.
I disagree. Its isn't a legal short cut, its created an entirely new legal process entirely. Which is why the ISA required revision, and the only reason why the defeat of the relevant act was never boohooed on the internet a couple of years back was because 9/11 occurred.
Frankly, the time to revise that law is long overdue. You might want to start up a new petition.
Did you indulge in fallacy of overgeneralisation when all this so called caring constitutes a pathetic statistically insignificant minority of the population of some 3.8 million or so? And does 10K signatures constitute anything in this fucking country while the fucking majority are homophobics?
Because you fucking claim that all of us don't care you dipshit.
Ever heard of the silent majority? Or in this case, the active non vocal majority?
Do you honestly believe that the fucking majority of people are homophobics? If so, why isn't anyone boycotting David Gan? Why is Kumar still walking around scot free? Hey. Perhaps you might explain to me why Zouk is so comfortable holding lesbian and gay parties and functions and there exist gay bars such as Rainbow and Venom, which have unfortunately closed after the recession?
Even on the political forums, where we should expect a high concentration of conservatives, we seen homosexuals and their supporters arguing there.
Yeah sure, I will be sure to scan my Math and Physics degree certs in a couple of months when I graduate from the University of Michigan and return home to work.
Does that matter when the only thing you have ever done is simply whine and moan, without even trying to get changes done? You don't even ATTEMPT to see how the changes could be made to achieve your vision. That's pathetic. Even just empty talk and discussion on how society could change is infinitely better than you just complaining.
Let him land on any Lyran world to taste firsthand the wrath of peace loving people thwarted by the myopic greed of a few miserly old farts- Katrina Steiner
