Originally posted by hisoka:
first we must make a differentiation regarding which clips. some are funny, some are painful reminders and of course some truely troubling. i really wonder which the mindef is going after. i find the NDP parody fine, for one its not really abotu the army and theres nothing really offensive. whats dissing? wanna give some examples?
you take clips dissing the companies, well simple, you may get sacked, but tahts fine. you only lose your job and you did go in voluntarily. + the company might just luagh it off depending on how and wha tthe diss was about.
in the military its different. first you are forced to enter the "company". 2nd the punishment is out of proportion(jailing pple for play acting's hardly reasonable) and again imposed unilaterally.
to you its not excuse, but then to me it is at least a cause and needs to be addressed more urgently then punishing the person. if the person had the utmost respect and pride, would he/she diss the company? if there was no foul other side to things, would there be things for them to reveal?
then we are questioning the very neccessity of NS the institution itself, are we not ? ...
soldiering is by neccessity tough and painful ... "good life" in itself is like an oxymoron there, lack of pride is one thing, something like that is another, if we take the lack of pride to be an excuse, then hey, it's like saying that littering is fine, cos we have no pride in clean neighbourhood streets ? ...
remember that there's this clip of some smoker recruits being made to sing songs before being allowed cigerattes ? ... or some (it looked like scouts) prancing around like a fool after firing off a machine gun ? ... of course, some are pretty harmless, like the bunch of chaps trying to open a "see hum" (that reminded me of past exercises in tekong" ... but where do you draw the line ? ... such things are subjective of course ... one particular brass may think nothing of it, another may look at it as a security breach of some sort ... who's right ? ... back to my point again, the SAF is only as effective as what others (potential adversaries) would think of it ... call it wayang if you like, but if you're not good at this wayang, military options would seem so much more attractive to which ever chap's to our north or south eh ? ... of course, we may well fight and win decisively in a real war, but then agian, chaps would be dead, homes destroyed, and parents would be crying eh ...
the best thing to do, it to limit such clips, after all, the explicit standing orders were that private video camera (phones) were NOT allowed in camps and military reserves, were they not ? ... I don't think mindef is going to DB someone over a clip of trying to open an oyster of course, (or even more serious clips) but they may just throw you in the can for bringing an explicitly forbidden item into camp, and using it ... the consequences are clearly spelt out, knowingly breaking them is just asking for it, no ? ...