Siew Kum Hong makes police report against “vile, vicious and malicious” attacks

The line has been crossed

The attacks have continued since my last posting on this blog. In particular, the latest attacks have alleged and/or insinuated that (a) I asked for and am receiving foreign funding from a Swedish politician, who allegedly funds the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) as well, and (b) I am involved or associated with the SDP and may be their representative or “mole” in Parliament.

Both of these allegations are untrue and false. They are vile, vicious and malicious attacks on me, and nothing short of character assassination. I consider them extremely defamatory and criminal in nature.

I did not at any time ask for, and have not at any time been offered or accepted, any sort of funding from any local or foreign entity, including the Swedish politician named in the latest attack. The only sources of income (or funding) that I have, are my employer and the Government of Singapore (in the form of my monthly NMP allowance). Furthermore, I am not involved or affiliated or associated, whether directly, indirectly or in any other way, with the SDP, and am certainly not their representative or “mole” in Parliament.

While I have not previously taken any action in response to the attacks to me on the Internet, I feel that this latest attack crosses the line and goes beyond any attacks that I am willing to countenance as being fair game for a public figure. I do not think that it is appropriate or acceptable for any MP, including an NMP, to accept any funding, whether local or foreign.

Accordingly, I made a police report on this matter tonight. I have also requested those forums that I am aware are currently hosting these falsehoods, to take them down.

In the interests of full transparency, I did meet with certain Swedish gentlemen recently. Details of those meetings are set out in my statement to the police. I met them at their request, just as I have met other foreigners from time to time, including staff from the various High Commissions and embassies in Singapore (such as from Australia, the US, the UK and other EU countries) and visiting foreigners, such as academics doing research on aspects of Singapore. At these meetings, we discuss matters related Singapore, in particular current affairs and the political situation in Singapore. From my perspective, these meetings are to help the foreigners obtain a better understanding of Singapore. I do not think that there was anything wrong with those meetings, and I have nothing to hide.

While I continue to believe that it is, on the whole, beneficial for Singaporeans to speak up for what they believe in, and I certainly hope that this wish and desire will continue and extend beyond the current discussions around the NMP re-nomination process and homosexuality, I also do believe -- and have always believed -- that rights and freedoms have limits.

I have to date refrained from taking any legal action in response to the lies and falsehoods that have been levelled at me. But this latest attack goes beyond anything that a reasonable person could possibly perceive as being a valid or legitimate exercise of the right to free speech, and I certainly will not tolerate the latest rounds of character assassination from cowards hiding behind the perceived anonymity of the Internet.

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Gay activists a key constituency of Aware

Gay activists a key constituency of Aware

I REFER to last Saturday's letter, 'Aware has never had a 'gay agenda'' by Ms Dana Lam, president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware). Since I was specifically mentioned, a response is called for.

First, the fact that Aware has done sterling work for women in the 24 years of its existence is not disputed. The 'ex-new exco', in its press statement, acknowledged this contribution and declared its commitment to build on these foundations.

What was a matter of concern to the 'ex-new exco' was that in recent years, Aware had veered towards promoting the homosexual political agenda. Aware sponsored the premiere of the movie Spider Lilies, which was about lesbian love. When asked about this, former Aware president Constance Singam said the film explores themes that Aware supports in its Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programme.

Aware's CSE has been taught in schools for more than two years. Its CSE instruction manual to schools expressly states that homosexuality is neutral and normal. This is a controversial proposition and parents should be concerned about the non-neutral content of the CSE programme. In fact, many are.

Additionally, the CSE manual goes further in stating that anal sex can be healthy or neutral with consent and a condom. Not only is this against the law, this kind of 'education' is designed to condition the minds of teenage students, from ages 12 to 18, towards the acceptability of homosexuality, purposefully equating homosexuality with the norm of heterosexuality. The Ministry of Education has stated categorically that there are aspects of the CSE instructor guide which are 'explicit and inappropriate and convey messages which could promote homosexuality'. These are hard facts and hardly figments of one's imagination.

On the day of the Aware extraordinary general meeting (EGM), the activist homosexual groups were out in full force, supporting the old guard. Many old guard supporters - those in the meeting hall and volunteers outside - were members of the activist homosexual group and spoke openly of their lifestyle. Many sexually challenged women were among the most vocal and vociferous supporters of the old guard.

If Singaporeans were generally unaware of Aware's 'gay agenda', it however, seems that the homosexual and lesbian supporters of the old guard attending the EGM were in the know. It appears that homosexual activists seeking to impose their values by mainstreaming homosexuality have become a significant chief constituency of Aware. Anyone present at the EGM would have seen abundant evidence of this. Discerning Singaporeans can examine the evidence, in print and from online eyewitness accounts, to make up their own minds.

Dr Thio Su Mien

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Temasek must set example on transparency

May 18, 2009
SALE OF BoA STAKE
Temasek must set example on transparency

I REFER to last Saturday's column, 'Temasek should clear the air', on the massive loss arising from Temasek Holdings' sale of its stake in Bank of America (BoA).

Temasek is neither a private equity fund nor a hedge fund, but it handles billions of dollars which belong to Singaporeans.

BoA's share price ranged between US$2.53 and US$14.81 during the period Jan 2 to March 31, when the sale is believed to have been made. This makes it well-nigh impossible to guess the size of the loss, except that it must be in billions of dollars.

After being told that the investments were for the long term - when the markets in the United States crashed after Temasek had invested heavily in US financial stocks - Singaporeans expect Temasek to explain the timing of the sale and the reasons for it. Do the reasons relate specifically to BoA or generally to the US stock market? Surely it cannot be due to diversifying the geographical distribution of future investments.

Temasek must give the lead and be transparent if other listed companies on the Singapore Exchange are expected to do so.

Denis Distant

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Support Suu Kyi in quest to be freed

Support Suu Kyi in quest to be freed

I REFER to last Saturday's report, 'Arrest is a setback, says Singapore', and would like to say we are heartened that the Singapore Government has made its position known to the Myanmar government concerning the new charges it has levelled against Ms Aung San Suu Kyi and its concern over her poor health.

Ms Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for almost two decades since winning democratically held elections in 1990. The 63-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate has paid a huge price for her beliefs and has been held in near isolation from her family and friends.

She is scheduled to go on trial today for breaching the terms of her house arrest after an American man swam across the lake and entered her house. This offence carries a maximum jail term of five years, as has been reported in the media. Ms Suu Kyi and her two assistants are currently detained in the infamous Insein Prison.

We call for the immediate withdrawal of this charge against Ms Suu Kyi and her two assistants and that the schedule for her freedom from house arrest at the end of this month is adhered to.

We also ask Singapore and all Asean member countries to support Ms Suu Kyi in this quest to be freed. It will be a grave injustice if we let this courageous citizen live all her days under house arrest or in prison, based on these new charges.

It is also important for the Asean community that the Myanmar government stands by its ratification of the Asean Charter, an instrument that seeks to strengthen democracy, enhance good governance and rule of law in all Asean member countries.

Braema Mathi (Ms)

Chairman, Maruah

Singapore Working Group for Asean Human Rights Mechanism

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Break free of this world wide delusion

The idea that the web is revolutionising our lives is not only wrong, but dangerous
Bryan Appleyard

The web is in trouble. Last week craigslist, a vast classified-ads site, had to abandon its “erotic services” category because of claims that it was an “online brothel” being used by sexual predators. And in France L’Oréal discovered eBay could not be forced to stop selling cheap knock-offs of its products.

After British villages rose up against the intrusion of Google’s Street View, Greece has banned the mobile camera cars that put pictures of people’s homes and streets on the internet. Privacy campaigners fear the power of Google and the online ad company Phorm to gather and exploit personal information. They invade your computer, monitor your web-browsing and buying, check where you are and then bombard you with targeted hard sells. It’s in the name of freedom and choice, they say, but whose?

Twenty years have passed since Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web. From 1989 to 2000 it grew exponentially. Then it crashed, and bright-eyed, cash-burning dotcoms across the world went bust. From the ashes emerged web 2.0, a cult created, engineered and run by Californians. This can be defined in many ways, but its principal features are, as with everything else in California, freedom, personal expression, letting it all hang out and making shedloads of wonga.

So, for example, you can publish to the world your every passing thought on Twitter, sneer at MPs on Blogger, display your life on Facebook, sell and bid for goods on eBay. And, all the while, Google, the biggest brand in the galaxy, will be watching everything you do, knowing where you live, logging your preferences and tracking your movements so that it can target its ads at you and only you.

Even if you don’t indulge, your life has been changed. At every turn you are told to get online and buy. Increasingly, shops are being seen as mere adjuncts to websites. Lots of things out there in cyberspace — this newspaper, for example — are just plain free, and most things are a lot cheaper. Web 2.0 is in your head and your pocket whether you like it or not. It will change everything.

What is wrong with this picture? Well, to start with, it is historically ignorant.

From The Sunday Times
May 17, 2009

“The internet”, says David Edgerton, professor of the history of technology at Imperial College London and author of The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900, “is rather passé . . . It’s just a means of communication, like television, radio or newspapers.”

Edgerton is the world expert in tech dead ends. Fifty years ago, he points out, nuclear power was about to change the world; then there was supersonic passenger flight, then space travel. The wheel, he concedes, did change the world, as did steam power. The web is not in that league.

One great promise of web 2.0 was that it would lead to a post-industrial world in which everything was dematerialised into a shimmer of electrons. But last year’s oil price shock and this year’s recession, not to mention every year’s looming eco-catastrophe, show that we are still utterly dependent on the heavy things of the old economy. In fact, says Edgerton, we may, in retrospect, come to see coal as the dominant technology of our time. China and America have lots of the stuff and they plan to burn it. The web, like it or not, uses energy, quite a lot of it, and that will continue to be made with big, heavy, industrial-age machines.

So what, if not everything, will the web change? The key feature of web 2.0 that is currently driving change is its intense focus on the individual. Google’s power springs from its ability to advertise not to populations or groups but to individuals. Blogging, tweeting and Facebooking all give the individual the unprecedented opportunity to blather to the entire world.

“Why not?” say the Californians. “This is paradise, the individual set free.”

The first objection to this is that it destroys institutions and structures that can do so much more than the individual. Clive James is no web-sceptic. He runs a superb website — CliveJames.com — and he regards the internet as “more of a blessing than a threat”. But he is wary of this focus on the individual.

“After Lehman Brothers crashed,” he says, “The Wall Street Journal carried an analysis that is still the best thing I have seen on the subject. But the story needed half a dozen qualified financial journalists to put it together, and masses of research that no lonely blogger could possibly do . . . This throws into relief the intractable fact that the liberty which the web offers to the individual voice is also a restriction on group effort.”

Institutions — publishers, newspapers, museums, universities, schools — exist precisely because they can do more than individuals. If web 2.0 flattens everything to the level of whim and self-actualisation, then it will have done more harm than good.

A further objection to the cult’s radical individualism is that it doesn’t have the intended hyper-democratic consequences. Wikipedia, for example, has tackled inaccuracy and subversion by introducing forms of authority and control that would seem to be anathema to its founding ideals. Bloggery is forming itself into big, institutionalised aggregators such as The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, and remains utterly parasitic on the mainstream media it affects to despise. Even Twitter is already coming to be dominated by conventional, non-web-based celebrity — Oprah Winfrey in the US and Stephen Fry over here.

The slightly more sinister aspect of this is that excessive individualism leads with astonishing rapidity to slavish conformity. The banking crisis may not have been caused by the internet but it was certainly fuelled by the way connectivity and speed created a market in which everybody was gripped by the hysteria of the herd.

“There seems to be an inverse correlation between technological speed and intellectual diversity,” observes Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy.

Or there is the weird phenomenon of flash mobs. People agree by text message or tweet to assemble in one place and, suddenly, do so. This was originally intended as a joke or art piece designed to demonstrate sheep-like conformity, but it rapidly became an aspect of cultish libertarianism. It doesn’t work. Flash mobs in Russia are simply prevented by cutting off mobile-phone coverage. Old-world politics is more powerful than the web.

And, finally, the everything-free, massively deflationary effects of the web may be over. Rupert Murdoch, head of The Sunday Times’s parent company, has said he is thinking of charging for online versions of his papers. The hard fact that somebody, somehow, has to pay for all this is breaking into web heaven.

The cult is the problem. I know that this article — it always happens — will be sneered at all over the web by people who cannot think for themselves because they are blindly faithful to the idea that the web is the future, all of it. I will be called a Luddite.

It is the cultists who threaten the web. They are the ones encouraging dreams of a utopia of the self. They fail to see that the web is just one more product of the biology, culture and history that make us what we are. In the real world, it is wonderful, certainly, but it is also porn, online brothels, privacy invasions, hucksterism, mindless babble and the vacant gaze that always accompanies the mindless pursuit of the new. The web is human and fallen; it is bestial as much as it is angelic. There are no new worlds. There is only this one.

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In a culture of secrecy, no courage is required

In a culture of secrecy, no courage is required

Sunday, 17 May 2009

Ravi Philemon

“A Temasek spokeswoman declined Friday to comment on the price the fund sold its shares for or the timing of the sale”, reported the Associated Press. Why should the secretive Temasek Holdings reveal such sensitive information to a wire agency when they will not reveal it to the real stakeholders in the government holding company, the citizens of Singapore?

In 2008, Temasek Holdings (which was by then managing portfolios worth $185 billion), was asked to appear before the US House of Representatives before a joint sub-committee of the House Financial Services Committee in a hearing related to foreign government investments in the United States. Temasek Holdings then declared that, “(it) has to sell assets to raise cash for new investments and doesn’t require the government to give approvals”, mainly to assuage US concerns on transparency and non-politicization of investments.

Ms. Ho Ching’s penchant for risk-taking came to the fore in July 2007 with Temasek’s roughly $6 billion investment in Barclays, taking a 2.1 percent stake in the bank. The New York Times then reported a former (unnamed) advisor to Temasek Holdings as warning that Temasek’s strategy of buying big chunks of companies exposes it to potentially deep losses if markets turn.

The warning by the unnamed former advisor now certainly looks prophetic. In March 2009, the Ministry of Finance reported that the Singapore sovereign wealth fund lost $39 billion - 31 percent of its value - in just eight months. It’s portfolio shrank from $185 billion to $127 billion between March and November last year.

Temasek seems to be on a roll with its losing streak; and what is even more appalling is its continuing secrecy in the face of these losses. A Temasek spokesman, who revealed that “we have divested our shares in the Bank of America”, failed to answer any other queries, including the price it got for divesting 188.8 million shares in the Bank of America.

A culture of secrecy

Secrecy seems to be the culture that Ms. Ho has brought with her to Temasek Holdings.

Temasek Holdings lifts its cloak of secrecy partially when it is beneficial to its cause. For example, in October 2004, to satisfy the legal requirements in issuing bonds to raise money from the public, Temasek reported its accounts to the public for the first time in its 30-year history. Where is this accountability when $6.8 billion seem to have been lost in the untimely divestment from Bank of America?

What is even more alarming is the fact that they would have probably kept quiet if not for the compulsory Form 13F filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from Temasek indicating that the fund no longer held shares in Bank of America or Merrill Lynch as of 31 March 2009.

In taking pre-emptive measures from the negative response such news will be unleashed from the public, Ms. Ho posted on Temasek’s website that it will now cut its holdings in the so-called OECD countries to 20 percent as it expands in Asia and emerging markets from Latin America to Africa.

The question remains, even with the pre-emptive statement before the filing was made public, “even if there is a need to cut the exposure to OECD countries, why do it now, especially when you will make such huge losses?” Did not Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew say in February this year when explaining why Singapore was able to invest in American banks that, “When we invest, we are investing for 10, 15, 20 years. You may look as if you are making a big loss today, but you have not borrowed money to invest. You will ride the storm, the company recovers, your shares go up”?

How right was Minister Mentor when he says that the investments are “your shares”? If they indeed belong to the people of Singapore, don’t they have a right to know where, when and how the funds are invested; and even more importantly what are the profits and the losses of such investments? Why the reluctance to reveal to the real shareholders the actual price the fund sold its shares of Bank of America for or the timing of the sale?

Ms. Ho was the head honcho of Singapore Technologies before she became the CEO of Temasek Holdings. Singapore Technologies under her leadership bought Micropolis in 1996 for $55 million, despite knowing that Micropolis had a history of failures. Approximately one year later, Singapore Technologies had tired of losses generated by the disk-drive manufacturer and ended Micropolis’ operations worldwide; loosing $630 million as a result. The Chairman of Temasek Holdings had defended Ms. Ho’s fiasco in Micropolis by saying that she had the courage to cut the losses.

Ms. Ho seems to leave a trail of taking huge risks and making even larger losses, first with Singapore Technologies and now with Temasek Holdings.

You need no courage to cut the losses when the funds invested were not yours in the first place.

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Top medical honour for PM

May 17, 2009

Top medical honour for PM

PM pays personal tribute to doctors as he is made honorary member of SMA

By Kor Kian Beng
		PM Lee received the Singapore Medical Association's honorary membership at the association's 50th anniversary dinner last night. -- ST PHOTO: LAU FOOK KONG

ON A night when he received the highest accolade from the medical profession, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong paid tribute to doctors for keeping him alive.

Doctors must comfort and care, says PM In the last 50 years, Singapore's health-care standards have been totally transformed. But a lot of credit must also go to our medical professionals. Your professionalism, dedication and patient labours have benefited generations of Singaporeans, all of whom will need medical care at some point of their lives. I am honoured and very happy to become an honorary member of the Singapore Medical Association. I am not a doctor, but I know many doctors. My first wife was a doctor, and so are my sister, cousin and two of my uncles. I know doctors as colleagues in Cabinet and Parliament, and have also worked with many doctors on our health-care system. I have been treated by a succession of doctors at various times, and but for their good judgment and conscientious care, I might not be here tonight. ... more

'I have been treated by a succession of doctors at various times and, but for their good judgment and conscientious care, I might not be here tonight,' he said, when the Singapore Medical Association (SMA) made him an honorary member.

In November 1992, he was diagnosed with intermediate-grade malignant lymphoma and went for chemotherapy. In April 1993, doctors said his lymphoma was in complete remission.

On Saturday night, Mr Lee spoke before 350 guests at the Fullerton Hotel, where the SMA held its 50th anniversary dinner.

In his citation, SMA president Chong Yeh Woei said Mr Lee always kept a 'close watch' on health issues.

One instance was when Mr Lee chaired a 1992 ministerial committee that published a White Paper on affordable health care. This became Singapore's blueprint for its approach to health care for the next 16 years.

Public spending on health care has also risen 'significantly' since Mr Lee became Prime Minister in 2004, said Dr Chong. He added that policy changes under Mr Lee's watch - including means testing - have made life easier for most Singaporeans.

In a 25-minute speech with many personal touches, Mr Lee pictured his Meet-The-People sessions with Teck Ghee residents as doctor-patient encounters:

'I have learnt the importance of good bedside manners and found that even when I cannot solve my residents' problems, lending a patient listening ear will often help them unburden themselves and feel better.

'For MPs, like doctors, must not only try to cure - and in fact not all cases can be cured - but must always care.'

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