::Homework Crapbox:: (version 2013 & 2014 & 2015 & 2016)
-
Professional female stunt driver pranks terrified driving instructors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WaAu4L2cl4c -
-
In contrast to Amos, Chee Soon Juan actually cancelled his own book launch during last week's mourning period out of respect for Lee Kuan Yew.
https://www.facebook.com/chee.s.juan/posts/10152991507461773?pnref=story -
-
A Malaysian woman writes :
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/are-malaysian-women-really-safe-224752281.htmlLet me just admit to an open secret: it is a fearful thing being a woman in Malaysia.
I woke up on Saturday morning to news of a robbery. One of my friends was robbed of her mobile and purse while walking to meet another mutual friend for dinner, at a reasonably early hour of 8.45pm in the affluent neighbourhood of Bangsar. That the incident happened merely a few metres from where she lived just accentuated the reality of the situation – that no matter where we live or are walking at on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, there is this possibility of us being mugged and robbed.
The incident happened so quickly, that passers-by could only advise her to make a police report. She went to the police beat, but somehow concluded defeat after trying to explain what had happened. Apparently such incidents happened frequently that all the police could do was ask her whether the robbers wore t-shirts. She felt defeated and hopeless. And, as friends, all we could do was just give her moral support and ensure that she was all right.
Although she was not grievously hurt after being knocked to the ground by the robbers on a motorcycle, she was shaken. I mean, we locals had always assumed that the neighbourhood of Bangsar was a recommended address, and our group of girlfriends always had our meetings there and felt relatively safe when we are out in the neighbourhood. But this incident has shaken all of us. We had a chat about it and could not help but come to the agreement that there was a gendered issue at hand, despite us all being educated, resilient, empowered women and did not want to let ourselves be victimised.
Would the robbers dare push down a man over a woman? Are women so helpless when walking alone down the streets of KL?
The reality is this: women are the victims. My ex-boyfriend, despite supporting feminism himself, always insisted on walking together with me to my car, and when us girls get together, we would walk in groups and at the end of the outing, there was this plan on sending each of us to our cars or sending us safely to our doorsteps.
Running groups would always have a “sweeper� who will ensure that the last runner, most times yours truly – a woman – arrives safely at the finish.
Going out the door every day involve meticulous planning, not only on our appearances but also safety. There’s a drill before locking the front door: pepper spray handy? Check. Are we wearing heels or shoes that allows us to run away when an unsafe situation happen? Check. Are we holding an umbrella to not only shelter us from the possible rain but also as a potential self-defence weapon should we be attacked? Check. Walk briskly, do not look at our phones and be aware of our surroundings, holding our handbags tightly over our shoulders, with the placement of the handbags on the shoulder not facing the street? Check. Check. Check. Check.
That, ladies and gentlemen, for the lucky ones among us women, is only the walk from our front doors to our cars. Once safely inside our cars, we need to conveniently hide the handbag away from view just in the case our windows are smashed when we stop at traffic lights. For the rest of us who have to rely on public transportation – there is the need to ensure that we get on the buses, LRTs, trains, taxis safely and once inside such transportations; try not to worry about being molested or worse, abducted, raped and killed.
So much worry for any individual to handle, don't you think?
We hear of reports on women being robbed, mugged, raped, killed every few months or so. Sometimes, the headlines will blare on a particularly sadistic case: the barely 15-year-old girl who was raped by 38 men in Kelantan; the cases of Noor Suzaily Mukhtar, Nurul Huda Ghani, Nurin Jazlin Jazimin, Choo Gaik Yap, Canny Ong; and many, many others.
Reports on these cases will be followed by a list of precautions that we women need to take, the sprouting of self-defence classes around the neighbourhood, the incessant messages or calls by anxious parents and spouses when we women travel daily. Not to mention the calls for women to be covered up, hidden, to stay at home by misogynistic men. We would be mad and angry, then after a while forget about the cases. Repeat.
When we women voice out the daily fears for our safety, it does sometimes feel like things fall to deaf ears. When we are threatened by rape or murder, who can we turn to? Who will protect us?
Are we really safe in the streets of Kuala Lumpur? I think not. – April 1, 2015.
-
Stray dogs fed by woman turn up at her funeral to mourn her passing
http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/this-urban-jungle/stray-dogs-fed-by-woman-turn-up-at-her-funeral-to-mourn-her-passing -
http://therealsingapore.com/content/singaporean-suggests-special-sg50-50-note-lee-kuan-yews-face
KS Neoh from University of Malaya posted :
"Haha. For all the claims about respecting and admiring Mr LKY, this kind of suggestion by the author of the article merely shows how little he has understood Mr Lee. LKY would be disgusted by this kind of phoney adulation."
KS Neoh is wrong, and this shows how little KS Neoh has understood of Lee Kuan Yew, who is such a pragmatic and intelligent man, that if having a $50 note with his portrait to commemorate Sg50 would help to instill in Singaporeans a sense of patriotism and thus Singaporeans' willingness to defend and work for the good of the country, Lee Kuan Yew would allow it without having any personal egotistic feelings (including personal disgust) getting in the way of a greater good, a far-sighted objective. Lee Kuan Yew was a greater man than KS Neoh can understand. -
The Lee Kuan Yew conundrum by Graham Allison :
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/25171/lee_kuan_yew_conundrum.html
Washington, D.C., is fast becoming an acronym for “Dysfunctional Capital.� Singapore, in contrast, has become the poster child for “the concept of good governance,� to quote the Financial Times’s obituary for the country’s longtime leader, Lee Kuan Yew, who was laid to rest on Sunday. For Americans in particular, this contrast presents a conundrum. On the one hand, Americans hold as a self-evident truth that their democracy is the best form of government. On the other hand, they see mounting evidence daily of Washington’s gridlock, corruption, and theatrical distractions, which makes their system seem incapable of addressing the country’s real challenges.In assessing the quality of national governance, international rankings often focus on three related baskets of indicators: first, a nation’s level of democracy and civic participation, and the degree to which citizens exercise political rights; second, the effectiveness of its government in facing issues, making policy choices, executing policy, and preventing corruption; and third, its performance in producing the results people want, including rising incomes, health, and safety.
Let’s start with performance, since it is easiest to measure. As a Russian proverb declares, it is better to be healthy, wealthy, and safe than sick, poor, and insecure. Who can disagree? On these criteria, how has Singapore performed over the course of its first five decades versus the United States; or the Philippines (which the U.S. has been tutoring in democracy-building for a century); or Zimbabwe (an African analogue that declared independence from the United Kingdom just a few years after Singapore, and where dictator Robert Mugabe has been as dominant a national force as Lee Kuan Yew has been in Singapore)?
Over the past 50 years, real per-capita GDP in Singapore grew 12-fold. In current dollars, the average Singaporean’s income grew from $500 a year in 1965 to $55,000 today. Over that same period, real per-capita GDP in the United States and the Philippines doubled, and Zimbabwe’s actually dropped. When comparing the United States and Singapore, it is important to note that Singapore was essentially catching up to America. But what about economic performance in the 21st century? Over the past decade and a half, U.S. GDP has grown an average of less than 2 percent a year—while Singapore’s averaged nearly 6 percent. In the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Competitiveness Index, Singapore was ranked second overall, behind only Switzerland (the United States came in third). For the past seven years, Singapore has also been ranked the best place in the world to do business by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
As for its healthcare services, Singapore’s infant-mortality rate has fallen from 27.3 deaths per 1,000 births in 1965 to only 2.2 in 2013. A child born in the United States has three times the chance of dying in infancy of one in Singapore. In the Philippines, 23 out of every 1,000 children born die in infancy. In Zimbabwe, 55. In 2012, Bloomberg Rankings judged Singapore the world’s healthiest country based on the full array of health metrics; the United States ranked 33rd, the Philippines 86th, and Zimbabwe 116th. Singapore also has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. A citizen is 24 times more likely to be murdered in the United States than in Singapore. And in 2012, less than 1 percent of Singaporeans reported that they struggled to afford food or shelter, by far the lowest percentage in the world.
The second basket in assessing governance focuses on what experts call the effectiveness of the governmental process itself. Each year, the World Bank produces Governance Indicators metrics on government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. Singapore leads the United States by a significant margin on each of these measures and is not even on the same level with the Philippines and Zimbabwe. Singapore’s widest lead over both the United States and comparable nations comes in the prevention of corruption and graft. Singapore scores in the top 10 while the United States ranks 20 countries lower on the list, with the Philippines and Zimbabwe in the bottom third. According to the 2014 Gallup World Poll, 85 percent of Americans see “widespread� corruption in their government, while only 8 percent of Singaporeans believe their government is corrupt.
On democratic participation and personal liberties, Freedom House produces an annual report. In its 2014 ranking, the United States was among the freest countries in the world. Singapore scored in the bottom half, behind South Korea and the Philippines. It lost points mainly for Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party’s tight management of the political process. According to its report, “Singapore is not an electoral democracy. … Opposition campaigns have typically been hamstrung by a ban on political films and television programs, the threat of libel suits, strict regulations on political associations, and the PAP’s influence on the media and the courts.�
The contrast between Singapore’s ranking in the first two categories, and the third, reminds us of a fundamental question of political philosophy: What is government for? Contemporary Western Europeans and Americans tend to answer that question by emphasizing political rights. But for Lee Kuan Yew, “the ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society establish conditions that improve the standard of living for the majority of its people.� As one of his fellow Singaporeans, Calvin Cheng, wrote this past week in The Independent, “Freedom is being able to walk on the streets unmolested in the wee hours in the morning, to be able to leave one’s door open and not fear that one would be burgled. Freedom is the woman who can ride buses and trains alone; freedom is not having to avoid certain subway stations after night falls.� Lee Kuan Yew always insisted that the proof is in the pudding: rising incomes for the broad middle class, health, security, economic opportunity.
To Western ears, the claim that an autocratic state can govern more effectively than a democratic one sounds heretical. History offers few examples of benevolent dictatorships that delivered the goods—or stayed benevolent for long. But in the case of Singapore, it is hard to deny that the nation Lee built has for five decades produced more wealth per capita, more health, and more security for ordinary citizens than any of his competitors.
Thus Lee Kuan Yew leaves students and practitioners of government with a challenge. If Churchill was right in his judgment that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others, what about Singapore?
-
Poor little 4 yr old Syrian girl thought the camera aimed at her was a gun and that she was going to die, and so in trauma she raised her hands in fearful surrender. If only the rest of the world had Singapore's ultra strict gun laws and effective enforcement, but with much of the world torn asunder by senseless wars with no ends in sight...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3019198/Heartbreaking-moment-four-year-old-Syrian-girl-surrendered-photographer-pointed-camera-assumed-gun.html -
There are many problems with using international or US based crowdfunding platforms (eg. Singapore money transfers not supported). The Singapore Government should ideally implement a secure Singapore based crowdfunding platform (run by the Government) that Singaporeans can use for cases such as these, to help fellow Singaporeans. Anyone knows how we can help Mr John Low?
Mr John Low suffers chronic pain from arthritis and rotator cuff disorder - a tear in a tendon in his shoulder.
But that's the least of his worries, said the father of three.
His wife, Irene, 47, had a heart operation in 2009 and has end-stage renal failure.
His eldest child, Cassandra, 21, who is waiting to go to polytechnic, has anaemia.
Second daughter Celia, 19, is partially deaf and needs a hearing aid. She also has mild intellectual disability and knows just a handful of words like "Papa", "Mama" and "Didi" (Mandarin for younger brother).
His son, Bernard, 12, has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and needs round-the-clock care.
The couple are jobless and rely on the $1,240 a month in financial assistance from the North East Community Development Council Medical social workers help them with the medical expenses, but Mr Low conceded that it is not enough.
"If we don't have enough to eat, let the children eat first because they are still young. My wife needs fresh food because of her kidneys. I can eat less. It doesn't matter," he said quietly.
Full report at : http://yourhealth.asiaone.com/content/super-dad-ignores-own-ailments-care-247-sick-wife-and-children -
http://news.asiaone.com/news/singapore/amos-yee-local-celebs-say-parents-are-blame
Fools. One has to be self-responsible for his free will choices. Only unenlightened dogmatic societal cultures blame the parents (even to the extent of vigilante persecution) for the 'sins' (though there's no such thing as sin), crimes or actions of the child. Even if it was a younger child, let alone a young adult like Amos, every individual must take self-responsibility instead of pushing the blame onto others, including parents. Among the 3 factors of Nature (ie. DNA) vs Nurture (ie. Environment) vs Soul (ie. Free Will and Karma), it is the Soul that will always be the single most important factor in determining responsibility. Even Nature (DNA) and Nuture (Environment) is subjugated to the Free Will of the Soul. That is, the incarnating soul chooses the physical body (ie. DNA genetics) and family (ie. Social Environment) that best serves the karma and existential program (ie. personal objectives and goals, ie. the syllabus learning and experiential outcomes) for the upcoming physical incarnation or lifetime. -
Mother can only save one of her two sons dying of kidney failure
http://yourhealth.asiaone.com/content/mother-can-only-save-one-her-two-sons-dying-kidney-failure -
ä¸å›½ China (zhong guo)
美国 USA (mei guo)
立陶宛 Lithuania (li tao wan)
以色列 Israel (yi se lie)
希腊 Greece (xi la)
黎巴嫩 Lebanon (li ba nen)
é˜¿æ ¹å»· Agentina (a gen ting)
ä¿„ç½—æ–¯ Russia (e luo si)
西ç�牙 Spain (xi ban ya)
葡�牙 Portugal (pu tao ya)
塞尔维亚 Serbia (sai er wei ya)
�兰 Holland (he lan)
法国 France (fa guo)
日本 Japan (ri ben)
波多黎� Puerto Rico (bo duo li ge)
比利时 Belgium (bi li shi)
斯洛文尼亚 Slovenia (si luo wen ni ya)
拉托维亚 Latvia (la tuo wei ya)
�大利 Italy (yi da li)
墨西哥 Mexico (mo xi ge)
波兰 Poland (bo lan)
德国 Germany (de guo)
英国 England (ying guo)
åŠ æ‹¿å¤§ Canada (jia na da)
科�特 Kuwait (ke wei te)
�塔尔 Qatar (ka ta er)
è‹±æ ¼å…° England (ying ge lan)
è‹�æ ¼å…° Scotland (su ge lan)
北爱尔兰 Northern Ireland (bei ai er lan)
�尔士 Welsh (wei er shi)
克罗地亚 Croatia (ke luo di ya)
瑞士 Switzerland (rui shi)
ç‘žå…¸ Sweden (rui dian)
挪� Norway (nuo wei)
芬兰 Finland (fen lan)
丹麦 Denmark (dan mai)
冰岛 Iceland (bing dao)
土尔其 Turkey (tu er qi) -
In Singapore, you're guilty until proven innocent :
http://therealsingapore.com/content/dear-trs-what-proof-do-police-need-put-you-lock -
This is what I've always understood, and have tried to communicate this to others. Lee Kuan Yew is absolutely unique, and Lee Kuan Yew's model of Governance works (and spectacularly too) but if and only if you have Lee Kuan Yew (who is one of a kind).
Lee Kuan Yew is a very good idea for Singapore, but a very bad idea for world http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/lee-kuan-yew-gave-singapore-independence-and-the-world-a-bad-idea/article23610260/ -
[Cat Photo] - "This Doesn't Concern You, Walk Away."
-
[Singapore] - Police brutality on the rise :
http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2015/04/man-claims-to-be-injured-by-plainclothes-officers-after-asking-to-verify-police-identity/ -
[China] - Guangxi man carries his paraplegic mom across entire city to find work
http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/this-urban-jungle/touching-photos-of-guangxi-man-carrying-his-paraplegic-mom-across-town-to-find -
LAW FIRM SENDS OUT THREATENING LETTERS TO M1 SUBSCRIBERS FOR TORRENTING
http://therealsingapore.com/content/law-firm-sends-out-threatening-letters-m1-subscribers-torrenting -
-
Life as Putin's troll: Army of online writers hired to praise president and mock rivals
Kremlin offers well-paid jobs to those who can write praise for the president and denigrate Ukraine and its supporters on internet forums
PUBLISHED : Monday, 06 April, 2015, 12:28am
UPDATED : Monday, 06 April, 2015, 12:44amAgence France-Presse in Saint Petersburg
Lyudmila Savchuk says it was the money that wooed her into the ranks of the Kremlin's information troops. Photo: AFP
Lyudmila Savchuk says it was money that wooed her into the Kremlin's online army, where she bombarded website comment pages with eulogies of President Vladimir Putin, while mocking his adversaries."Putin is great", "Ukrainians are Fascists", "Europe is decadent": Savchuk, 34, listed the main messages she was told to put out on internet forums after responding to a job advertisement online.
"Our job was to write in a pro-government way, to interpret all events in a way that glorifies the government's politics and Putin personally," she said.
Performing her duties as an internet "troll", Savchuk kept up several blogs on the popular Russian platform LiveJournal, juggling the virtual identities of a housewife, a student and an athlete. While the blogs themselves would be filled with apolitical content about life in Russia, she was paid to use the account identities to comment on other news sites and online discussions, leaving 100 comments on an average day.
Every morning, she says, she would get assignments for the day, a list of subjects on which to comment and ideas to propagate. "Ukraine has approved a reform plan to secure IMF aid" was the title of one recent assignment that Lyudmila had kept on her cellphone.
The instructions were for her to respond to the potentially positive Ukrainian news story with negative comments, such as "For the Ukrainian government, military needs are more important than those of the people."
Savchuk spent two months as a cyber-warrior, or what fans of news comment sections call "trolls", because they join to provoke or to spread propaganda, ruining what would usually be exchanges of opinion made in good faith.
She said she worked in a nondescript grey building in a busy neighbourhood in the north of the city of Saint Petersburg before quitting in March.
Her short job interview was conducted by a man who only gave his first name, Oleg. His first question was: "What do you think of our policy in Ukraine?"
"Like many others, I was seduced by their salary," said Savchuk, who is raising two children. Her monthly pay was 40,000 to 50,000 rubles (HK$5,500-6,900), considered good money in Russia's second largest city. The online onslaught of identical, often abusive internet comments discrediting Russia's opponents, and especially the United States, while hailing the Russian government, began even before Russia's stand-off with Ukraine.
A journalist with Novaya Gazeta opposition newspaper visited the Saint Petersburg agency in 2013 undercover and reported there were about 400 employees based out of a small building on the outskirts of the city.
Since then many Russian newspapers, and even foreign-language outlets that cover Russian events, have been forced to close comments sections because of the trolling torrent.
Local media reported that the operation moved to the larger, new building in October.
Now the Kremlin trolling centre's focus is the conflict in Ukraine, and it has reportedly added departments for people with foreign language skills and those able to Photoshop images.
Prospective trolls initially respond to employment opportunities on popular websites, where seemingly innocuous jobs titled "editor" or "content manager" are posted by an entity calling itself an agency for internet studies. The employee turnover is huge, Savchuk said. "The work is hard. You have to write an enormous amount and a lot of people were laid off since they lacked the skill or simply couldn't express these ideas," she said.
Most of the staff are young, often students. "They were completely indifferent to politics and did not take anything seriously. For them it's just a way to earn money."
But there were also other kinds of employees full of enthusiasm. "There weren't many of them, but for them this work was a true mission," Savchuk said.
Most workers hardly speak to each other, often giving just a brusque "Excuse me, I'm in a hurry," she said.
Some seemed afraid to talk at all, she added: "They have cameras everywhere."
Below the article, an astute visitor comments :"This article itself could have been written by a Ukrainian government internet troll."
-
Since earnings from the 2013 cinema box office is already exhausted, who now stands to profit the most from mass speculative invoicing (with tens of thousands of demand letters sent out internationally) a couple of years later? The suer may just be the original uploader (using anonymizing precautions).
https://www.google.com.sg/#q=dallas+buyers+club -
1 little Lee Kuan Yew made all the difference between Heaven and Hell :
http://dreams-of-malaysian.blogspot.sg/ -
Minister K Shanmugam writes :
Mr Lee Kuan Yew was a very frugal man, and I explain that because that's the way he ran the country. Once, I was on a trip with him to the United States. I was at his table for dinner. At the end of dinner, we were given dessert. I asked for ice cream, and we were given ice cream. This was the United States - they gave me three large scoops. I hadn't expected it. I don't eat much dessert, so I took one scoop and I left the rest behind. He saw that. He told me off. He said, you are wasting food. I told him, this is what they served. I didn't ask for this. He said: You should have found out how much they would serve and should have ordered only what you could have eaten. He said that - even though we were being hosted by the United States, and it didn't matter to him that it was the Americans who were paying for it. It was not a question of money. He believed as a principle that there should not be waste. It's a simple illustration. But this was central to the way he thought. Both in his personal life and in government. His exercise shorts, for example. For 17 years, he wore the same shorts. And when it broke or tore - he patched it up, or his wife patched it up for him. And he was very careful with government money in the same way. Because it is your money. Every week, we have a Cabinet meeting. Every week. Even this week, Prime Minister (Lee Hsien Loong) called for a Cabinet meeting. We meet first for lunch. Sometimes not, but almost always, we meet for lunch. And this is not a social lunch, we discuss government business. Cabinet meeting is after the lunch. Mr Lee Kuan Yew does not attend the lunch. But his rules are, because you have to eat lunch anyway, he says you have to pay for the lunch even though you are coming to Cabinet to discuss Cabinet (matters). You have lunch, you pay for the lunch. The Government doesn't pay for the lunch. We must be the only Cabinet in the world that does that, when we meet to discuss government (business). But it is good, because in every way, we are reminded every day that public money should be carefully spent.