List of Famous Hypocrisies
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"If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If
you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought." LKY
Any more? Welcome to list here. -
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Strange, then why are the topics here closed or banned. Very strange!Originally posted by robertteh:"If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If
you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought." LKY
Any more? Welcome to list here. -
Hi Rane,
When you believe you are right, go ahead and post your views without fear or favor and without submission to threats of defamation by their cyber-agents.
Just post your views and opinions objectively without any personality and I think we will be fine. It may take time for the scholars in the media to change because now they are still afraid to lose to hyper-pay jobs. They will have to wait for signals from the ground and their own political leaders who currently are banning them from crusading journalism for whatever that may be.
One such editor of Today has already lost his due to his seeking to be more independent in news reporting. -
So this is happening in a democratic, "democratic" Singapore!!!Originally posted by robertteh:Hi Rane,
When you believe you are right, go ahead and post your views without fear or favor and without submission to threats of defamation by their cyber-agents.
Just post your views and opinions objectively without any personality and I think we will be fine. It may take time for the scholars in the media to change because now they are still afraid to lose to hyper-pay jobs. They will have to wait for signals from the ground and their own political leaders who currently are banning them from crusading journalism for whatever that may be.
One such editor of Today has already lost his due to his seeking to be more independent in news reporting. -
True but literal interpretations with the application of common sense is stooooo-pid!
Of course there cannot be ansolute freedom whereby all laws are to be disregarded. Anarchy will be the only victor!
On this premise, I don't think there's anything wrong with LKY's statement.
The only thing wrong is you who persistently never fails to try to find fault with LKY!! What the bloody hell is wrong with you? Get a life!
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It would have been easier to accept LKY's contribution if there are less hypocrisies to his stated principles instead of constantly deviating and adopting totally contradicting new sets of principles as time progresses.
Were the changes due to his own perception for his own political convenience, or was it for the larger benefit for Singaporeans ?
How should one react if someone promises a ''goal in life'', but having received one's support will say that the ''goal in life'' is not meant for you, and is only for those who are more talented to have led you ?
History has been forgotten and allowed to be re-written with a new slant for new political objectives.
Even MM LKY was referred by in some writings as the ''Father of Singapore's Independence''.
Was LKY the one that started Singapore's move towards independence, as Sun Yat Sen did for China - and rightfully creditted by all Chinese as the ''Father of the Republic of China'' ?
Or was David Marshall the first Singaporean politician that started the ''political conciousness of Singaporeans'' towards taking a more active role for our own Future - much like Sun Yat Sen did for China ?
As a compromise to outright independence from British Colonial Rule, David Marshall made a first step towards independence in the 1950s with the idea of ''self-governance''; and won the approval of the British Government for Singapore's ''Self-Rule''.
MM LKY was no better than Mao Tse Tung in riding on the wave of political conciousness that was started by others, and bringing the political process to its fulfillment.
Like Mao Tse Tung abandoning of Sun Yat Sen's vision for a China flowering with people free from being shackled, LKY abandoned his own political principles and visions of democracy - betraying the trust of the early Singaporean generation who believed his political vision for a Free Singapore based on Democratic Values.:
Think Again, Mr Lee
The Straits Times, May 20, 1959
Leslie Hoffman, then editor-in-chief of the Straits Times, wrote this editorial on freedom and free speech, in response to Mr Lee Kuan Yew's speech during one of the election rallies before the 1959 election.
I have been a newspaperman all my working life and I have spent those 24 years on two Malayan newspapers -- the Malaya Tribune and the Straits Times.
I was born in Singapore and educated here and what knowledge of newspaper work I have, I acquired in Singapore.
It is with this background that I say that not since the Japanese conquered this island in Feb 1942, has the press of Singapore faced such a grave threat as it does today.
On Wednesday, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, secretary-general of the People's Action Party, said at a lunchtime rally at Cifford Pier:
"Any newspaper that tries to sour up or strain relations between the Federation and Singapore after May 30 will go in for subversion.
"Any editor, leader writer, sub-editor or reporter that goes along this line will be taken in under Preservation of Public Security Ordinance.
"We shall put him in and keep him in."
I have no doubt that Mr Lee means what he says.
So did the Japanese when they said no one must listen to short-wave broadcasts from outside Shonan -- as Singapore was then called -- or read any newspaper except the Shonan Shimbun, the only English-language newspaper published in Japanese-occupied Singapore.
But that did not prevent the people of Singapore from risking their lives to listen to the BBC or New Delhi, or from passing around cyclostyled transcripts of these broadcasts.
Recall those days
Mr Lee Kuan Yew should recall those days. He was here, as were other members of PAP central executive. So was I and numerous other newspapermen who refused to work for the Japanese.
The threat of death or imprisonment does not scare away anyone who believes in freedom -- the freedom of the individual to think, to read or to write as he pleases, within the confines of the laws of the state.
And there are laws in Singapore which ensure that sedition can be punished by the courts and that those found guilty of the offence can be sent to jail.
BUT MR LEE PREFERS TO USE THE PRESERVATION OF PUBLIC SECURITY ORDINANCE INSTEAD OF THE SEDITION ORDINANCE.
A strange choice for a man who once opposed this same Preservation of Public Security Ordinance in these words:
"What he (the Chief Minister) is seeking to do in the name of democracy is to curtail a fundamental liberty and the most fundamental of them all -- freedom from arrest and punishment without having violated a specific provision of the law and being convicted for it.
And again: "If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law -- if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states -- then what is it ?"
What Indeed ?
Mr Lee cannot have his cake and eat it. He must choose between democracy and totalitarianism. And so must his supporters.
His supporters, like Mr S Rajaratnam, a former president of the Singapore Union of Journalists and a former member of the staff of The Straits Times.
Mr Rajaratnam, writing in October 1955, in the Singapore Journalist, organ of the SUJ, on "The Press and Mr Speaker" had this to say:
"The press is fair game for touchy politicians. In recent months the local press has been accused of wilful distortions of weighty and lengthy pronouncements by gentlemen who are struck by the facts that they do not read as well in print as they sound.
"Believing as we do in free speech, we think that politicians are perfectly entitled to air their views on whether a newspaper or a journalist has done justice to their speeches. "But it is a different matter when differences of opinion as to sub-editing could result in a newspaper or a journalist being denied facilities which are normally obtained in a free country...
City of Merdeka
"It is to be hoped that when they (the Assemblymen) cry 'merdeka' (with or without a clenched fist), they mean also 'merdeka' for the press and pressmen who have no objection to having their ears boxed.
"All they ask is that they be allowed to carry on their pleasant and unpleasant duties of reporting and commenting with the greatest possible freedom.
"There will not be that feeling of freedom if a newspaperman feels that he can be kept out of the Assembly by the Speaker, whose decision cannot be questioned."
AND MR RAJARATNAM SHOULD AGREE THAT NEWSPAPERMEN WILL NOT HAVE "THAT FEELING OF FREEDOM" IF THEY ARE DETAINED IN PRISON BY A GOVERNMENT WHOSE DECISION CANNOT BE QUESTIONED.
However that may be, Mr Lee and Mr Rajaratnam should know their newspapermen better.
Threats will not prevent a good newspaperman from publishing a story which he considers should be published, or from commenting on an issue which is vital to the common good.
The Straits Times will continue to publish the news and honest opinion, whatever the consequences -- even if the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance is invoked against individual newspapermen.
Mr Lee and his comrades should think again -
Attended a seminar by SCDF on 6/7/2007.
Question (1) from the floor by RT: (in gist) With so many laws and regulations passed over the years to increase our fire safety, will we be over-regulating or over-killing our fire-regulations for the sake of regulations?
Reply by Chairperson of Q&A panel: These regulations are good for maintaining our fire safety.
Question (2) by RT: I find that the Fire Safety Managers are just employees and many of them do not have power over their employers to comply with fire regulations, so why introduce more and more regulations presuming responsibilities of FSM to implement them when they are so many existing constraints over the FSM in implementing regulations?
Reply: We do not hold the FSM responsible but we will hold employers responsible for breach of fire regulations.
Question (3) by RT: Why is there a double standard in the case of HDB flats where HDB is exempted from fire safety installations like the fire sprinklers.
If 80% of buildings are exempted why keep going for the remaining 20% with more stringent fire safety regulations of all kind.
Reply: Unable to reply. -
Leslie Hoffman? I heard that name. It was political. He disliked LKY for curtailing of free press.
I’ve read that LKY has cautioned him about his ‘biased’ articles.
Leslie fled Singapore after PAP won the elections, never to return again. -
Is it not amazing that HDB is a law to itself, and the Building Regulations somehow do not apply to even its plans ?
Looking at some of the Neighborhood Upgrading Schemes, the new additions of lifts and extra kitchen space built from 'LEGO type of vertical block building' has resulted in the wall of these additions being less than the statutory required distance from the roadside kerbs.
If I am not mistaken, the statutory requirement for the edge of a building is an offset that must be at least 3 or 5 meters away from the road kerb.
Yet, we see the structural wall of a new elevator shaft being built less than 2 meters from the road kerb.
If a speeding Mercedes car was found on an MRT track that is built more then 30 meters from the road kerb and on an elevated ground of more then 5 meters, what is there to prevent a speeding car from climbing a 200mm high kerb, onto a 1 meter wide pavement, and smashing into the wall of this elevator shaft ?
Is the HDB above the Law ? -
if u were him, will u not not have fled as well?Originally posted by googoomuck:Leslie Hoffman? I heard that name. It was political. He disliked LKY for curtailing of free press.
I’ve read that LKY has cautioned him about his ‘biased’ articles.
Leslie fled Singapore after PAP won the elections, never to return again.
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Hehe.......true!Originally posted by 4getmenot:if u were him, will u not not have fled as well?
I've also learned that he did come back to Singapore many years later to meet up with an old friend...holding an Australian passport.
Correction: I think they met up in Malaysia.
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Hehehee..Originally posted by Atobe:Is it not amazing that HDB is a law to itself, and the Building Regulations somehow do not apply to even its plans ?
Looking at some of the Neighborhood Upgrading Schemes, the new additions of lifts and extra kitchen space built from 'LEGO type of vertical block building' has resulted in the wall of these additions being less than the statutory required distance from the roadside kerbs.
If I am not mistaken, the statutory requirement for the edge of a building is an offset that must be at least 3 or 5 meters away from the road kerb.
Yet, we see the structural wall of a new elevator shaft being built less than 2 meters from the road kerb.
If a speeding Mercedes car was found on an MRT track that is built more then 30 meters from the road kerb and on an elevated ground of more then 5 meters, what is there to prevent a speeding car from climbing a 200mm high kerb, onto a 1 meter wide pavement, and smashing into the wall of this elevator shaft ?
Is the HDB above the Law ?
This is VERY typical of the government and their agencies..
because they are the rule-makers as well as the flouter of their own rules...
us citizens are just expected to follow along in Subservient Silence....
How long, do you think the people are willing to remain following along in Subervient Silence? -
When LKY said something in the past but now he hasn't practised what he preached.He should clarify to the ppl what his true beiief about democracy.Originally posted by :True but literal interpretations with the application of common sense is stooooo-pid!
Of course there cannot be ansolute freedom whereby all laws are to be disregarded. Anarchy will be the only victor!
On this premise, I don't think there's anything wrong with LKY's statement.
The only thing wrong is you who persistently never fails to try to find fault with LKY!! What the bloody hell is wrong with you? Get a life! -
True leaders will admit mistakes if mistakes have been made and not have to justify mistakes in the next breath. Remorse and clarifications make sense only if there is a genuine attempt at rectifying mistakes with actions and deeds.Originally posted by PRP:When LKY said something in the past but now he hasn't practised what he preached.He should clarify to the ppl what his true beiief about democracy. -
MM lee says Singapore has reached golden period. ThatÂ’s a bizarre statement.
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Golden tap of S$3.00 million per annum plus 6 months of bonuses and double pays for retiring while working and million-dollar lifelong pension. That is no doubt golden tap running non-stop.Originally posted by googoomuck:MM lee says Singapore has reached golden period. ThatÂ’s a bizarre statement.