Thursday, November 24, 2005

NKF hasn't died down!

in the spirit of catholic ascetism, i have decided to show you what happens when you simply ignore where the money goes. Sg_Review leads the way yet again, with the (presumably real) email below sent to the various relevant organisations:

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Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:40:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Jeffrey Ho
Subject: Televised Charity Show in July 2005 - Donation to NKF Cancer Fund

To: Feedback Unit - MCYS

cc. MDA/News Corp/BBC/WSJ/NYT/IHT/Sydney Morning Herald/Sg_Review


I refer to the various media reports:

1. Channel News Asia (19 Nov 2005) - MediaCorp produced NKF charity show at discounted rates
LINK - http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/179492/1/.html
2. Today (18 Nov 2005) - "Set the reocrd straight"
LINK - http://www.todayonline.com/articles/85080.asp
3. Electric New Paper (18 Nov 2005) - "Were costs too high?"
LINK - http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,97515-1132329540,00.html?

I am outraged that at the end of the day, out of every dollar I (and many more Singaporeans, many of whom may be out of job or amongst the 250,000 or so "New Poor" earning less than S$1,000 per month) donated to the Cancer Fund during its televised charity show in July 2005, only 25% have so far been channelled to the Fund.

What is more outrageous is the reports that the only 2 media companies in Singapore controlled by the Singapore government, MediaCorp and SPH, received almost $4.5m of the $11 million raised (some 40%), with MediaCorp (the host of the televised charity show) pocketing some $2.5 million and the rest in advertising and promotion cost.

First of all, like many SIngaporeans, I had expected that every dollar of my donation should go to the "true" beneficiaries, the pitiful cancer patients the show highlighted. Had I known that only 25% of every dollar I would donate would go to these patients, I might have acted differently. It is bad enough that the government is not subsidizing sufficiently the medical care and costs (of certain cancer drugs highlighted in a recent Straits Times article by Chua Mui Hoong) of these cancer patients, but to have some of these hard-earned donations from the generous contributions of compassionate (and maybe even "gullible", in the words of Lee Wei Ling) Singaporeans go into its coffers (through its ownership of MediaCorp and SPH) is not acceptable.

Would you be kind enough to answer the following questions uppermost on my mind:

1. MediaCorp said the shows were produced at a discount - not at cost. What was their profit margin?

2. What about the Advertising and Promotion cost (of approx $2 million) "donated" to MediaCorp, SPH and Today newspapers - did they profit from it or were they "charged" at cost?

3. Presumably, MediaCorp and SPH account for these "fees" as revenue in their Income Statement (since MediaCopr admitted as much that the donations from Singaporeans would be treated as a "commercial" deal), so this income will form part of their profit distributable to shareholders and staff. Am I right?

4. So far, only about $7.5 million have been accounted ($4.5 m to MediaCorp/SPH and $3 m to the Cancer Fund). What about the remaining $3.5 million? ($11m was reportedly raised with $2m pledged but not collected yet)

5. In the New Paper report, it said that, "The NKF is expecting another $2 million or so from pledges made but not yet collected". If this amount is not collected, would MediaCorp and SPH still pocket their $4.5 million, resulting in MediaCorp and SPH pocketing some 50% of the donation?

I wonder if other reputable media companies (like the BBC, News Corp, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal, etc - to whom I've copied here) would ever do such acts in the name of charity?

Rgds
Jeff Ho
An outraged and "gullible" Singaporean

Sunday, November 20, 2005

a question of constitution

does anyone know any girl by the name of Sue? if she's Canadian, she's likely to be less corrupted than if she's Singaporean. read on to find out why...

'Corrupt' ruling appealed
Ont. energy firm challenges $5.4M judgment
Richard Foot, CanWest News Service, Wednesday, November 16, 2005

A Canadian company wants an Ontario court to dismiss a multimillion dollar judgment reached against it in Singapore on the grounds Singapore's justice system is corrupt and unlawful.

The landmark case has wide implications for Canadians doing business overseas. Never before, say lawyers for both sides, has a commercial case dealt with the question of whether a foreign judgment can be enforced in Canada because the courts that issued it may be inherently unfair.

Lawyers for EnerNorth Industries Inc., a Toronto-based energy services company, will make that argument before the Ontario Court of Appeal in April, in a bid to avoid paying a $5.4-million US judgment awarded to Oakwell Engineering Ltd., a Singapore firm.

One of EnerNorth's lawyers, David Wingfield, said if the Singapore decision is upheld in Canada, a precedent will be set which would turn the Canadian courts into "little more than a glorified sheriff's department for all foreign legal systems -- no matter how odious or compromised they are by reason of government influence or monetary bribery."

Oakwell's lawyer, Ed Babin, said Canadian courts enforce judgments from other countries all the time and that refusing to do so in this case would carve out "a dramatic change" in the law.

In 1997, EnerNorth embarked on a project with Oakwell to finance, build and operate two power plants in India. In 2002, after the project ran into problems, Oakwell sued EnerNorth in the Singapore courts -- where each company had previously agreed they would settle any disputes.

The trial and appeal courts in Singapore allowed Oakwell's claim, awarding it damages against EnerNorth. Because EnerNorth's assets arein Canada, Oakwell asked a Canadian court to enforce the decision.

Last August, Ontario Superior Court Justice Gerald Day agreed with Oakwell's request, dismissing arguments by EnerNorth that the Singapore judgment is tainted by that country's allegedly corrupt and biased legal system.

"If this court were to accept the argument of general bias in this case, it would mean that no judgments from Singapore courts would be enforceable in Ontario," wrote Day in his decision,

But in documents filed with the Ontario Court of Appeal, EnerNorth's lawyers say Day failed to apply the proper legal test required of Canadian courts when enforcing foreign judgments.

In 2003 -- in a case involving a decision from a U.S. court -- the Supreme Court of Canada said Canadian courts can only recognize a foreign judgment if the foreign legal system meets Canadian constitutional standards.

The Singapore decision is the first foreign judgment, issued in a country other than Britain or the U.S., to be tested under this principle, said Wingfield. EnerNorth says Singapore's justice system fails to meet Canadian standards by almost every measure.

"Singapore is ruled by a small oligarchy who control all facets of the Singapore state including the judiciary, which is utterly politicized," the company's court documents say. "The judiciary bends over backwards to support the government's and ruling elite's interests."

The documents also say Oakwell is a subsidiary of a Singapore conglomerate whose owners have close ties with Singapore's government and ruling party and that the judges who presided over the case in Singapore also have close ties with Singapore's leaders.

Day said he could find "no cogent evidence" that there was specific bias toward Oakwell by the Singapore courts. However, EnerNorth says evidence of general bias, or systemic corruption, is enough to reject the judgment in Canada.

"EnerNorth is faced with having its assets seized under Canadian law to pay a judgment that was granted by a corrupt legal system before biased judges in a jurisdiction that operates outside the rule of law," the company's documents say.

© The Edmonton Journal 2005

source:
The Edmonton Journal

For related discussions see:
1) Mellanie Hewlitt; Lifting The Veil On Singapore Politics
2) Carl Kapeland: Legitimized Corruption Understood

yup... Sue's just a bad pun on the local kangaroo courts. but it also protects me from getting Sue-d because i'm not talking law at all! heh heh. anyway, all the above were plagiarised from Sg_Review la, in case you thought i'm so free.

Friday, November 18, 2005

curve the bell

sick and bored of exams? think you're a goner and feeling a sense of indescribable insecurity? well... there's always something you can do about it! here're some suggestions:
(warning: not all ideas have been practically tested. some may get you kicked.)

...make your presence felt
- dress outrageously. if someone's judging your dressing, that someone's distracted.
- chemical warfare. scent yourself pungently, attack your neighbour's olfactory nerves!
- indigestion. fart to any Mozart piece with impunity. not recommended for music exams.
- sonic booms. flip your papers loudly, click your pens incessantly, drag your chairs, etc.
- clumsiness. keep dropping stuff that you are not gonna use. drop them as far away as possible.
- tuberculosis. no, not cough to cheat; but cough to frustrate... or earn free strepsils.
- exeunt. when leaving, accidentally bump into adjacent folks, then apologise profusely.

...casting doubts unto others
- before it starts, tell your neighbours how you think this paper is easy and that they'll do fine.
- drop your answers once (or more) during the exam into your neighbours field of vision.
- simulate flipping your question paper with demonic speed. (flip forward, then flip back, etc.)
- always ask for more paper. but do not frustrate the same invigilator.
- exhibit extreme calulator dexterity: use it with one hand at 200wpm (audibly, of course).
- look focused, confidently smirk while shaking your head, and laugh softly periodically.
- smile and nod at all passing invigilators who make eye-contact.

...make friends and (mis)use them
- borrow stationery from everyone around you, whether you use it or not.
- tell them to be wary of their neighbour whom you suspect would copy their answers.
- wish them good luck and give an overly-firm handshake designed to crush their spirit.
- leave your phone (with a set alarm) under your neighbour's table. make sure set to full volume.
- invite your neighbours to discuss the answers after the exam.
- share your freaky amulets and ghoulish talismans with them, claiming to bring them luck.

so you see... the bell curve is not necessarily out of your control or a neutral tool. with the "right state of mind" and "keen creativity", anyone can curve the bell even on the last day of exams!

##########

critique of examinations: losers of the system become dissidents

the institution of 2-hour final papers is a subjective and unfair burden to all students, especially final papers which make up a large (make-or-break) percentage and essay questions requiring an impossible outline with no resources for quoting.
- there should be multiple smaller tests each designed to distribute a percentage of the grade.
- open book, multiple choice, and structured questions should be more common.
- where the objective is to distinguish brilliant students, non-stressful methods should be used.
- all methods of grading should be addressed against a backdrop of authoritatively approved aims and objectives for the grading itself. this list of goals for grading should be publicised (at minimum, all students should be made aware) and opened up for criticism and dialogue.

a further injustice is done with institutions that refuse to return the graded papers for fair scrutiny and review, further compounded by charging a fee for regrading.
- if the institution wants to keep any material, they should seek permission and inform us of the reason(s) to do so.
- if the grade is to be decided behind closed doors, the graders should at least detail their standards of marking and show them real examples.
- regrading should not be charged, and where fees are imposed, the reason(s) must be made known and appropriation of such monies justified.

there is a commonly-heard argument: if others can ace it, why can't you? this somewhat misleading and fallacious argument ignores the institutional injustices inscribed into the exams. if you ace an unfair exam, are you truly better? each exam goes some way in defining YOUR FUTURE. do you agree with the way they are defining it for you?

and for christ's sake, mugging is a negative externality generated by this oppressive regime. submit to it at your own peril, or be awakened and fight it.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Nguyen Tuong Van

although the language was less than satisfactory, but that's because he's an aussie. that aside, his opinions are quite exemplary - i definitely concur with his sense of indignance. his passion for Tuong Van is definitely more than just aussie.

Singapore's deadly sling (excerpt from The Age)
By Mark Baker
October 25, 2005

AT DAWN on a Friday soon a young Australian will be taken from his death-row cell in the grey colonial pile of Singapore's Changi Prison, fitted with a hood and noose and dropped to oblivion through a gallows trapdoor. A few hours later his broken body will be handed back to his family.

In the island metropolis to our north, a place that admires itself through a polished veneer of modernity and sophistication, the city-state's brand of justice will be delivered with all the subtlety and compassion of the Middle Ages.

Yet few beyond his family, friends and dogged legal team are likely to mourn the passing of Nguyen Tuong Van, convicted heroin trafficker. As one of his Melbourne lawyers, Julian McMahon, observed despairingly at the weekend, Nguyen is not the kind of pretty young Anglo-Saxon damsel whose distress ignites national indignation.

But there are good reasons Australians should be alarmed and angered by the impending execution of the 25-year-old former Melbourne salesman — and why they should be demanding a much more vigorous response from the Federal Government to the final rejection of his plea for clemency than the limp resignation we are now witnessing from John Howard and Alexander Downer.

In short, Nguyen is to be hanged on a pretext that flouts the principles, if not the letter, of international law, after a flawed trial and after a comprehensive diplomatic snub that makes a mockery of the supposedly close political, defence and business friendship between Singapore and Australia.

Nguyen was arrested at Changi Airport in December 2002 after a routine security check revealed 396 grams of heroin strapped to his body and hidden in his hand luggage. Under Singapore law — the harshest in Asia — anyone found with more than 15 grams of heroin is deemed a trafficker and the mandatory sentence is death.

But the verdict that Nguyen was trafficking into Singapore is a nonsense. He was arrested in the airport transit lounge while preparing to board a plane for the second leg of a journey from Cambodia to Australia. He had not passed through Singapore immigration and he had no intention of entering Singapore. Even neighbouring Malaysia — which has hanged three Australians for drug trafficking since the 1980s — acknowledges a legal distinction between people who formally enter a country and those who are merely in transit (those found with drugs in transit face a relatively modest jail sentence).

Nguyen's lawyers did not pursue this obvious defence because the Singapore courts — which adopt the airs and trappings of their British colonial ancestry but are in practice a deeply politicised law unto themselves — have flatly refused such arguments in the past.

The trial itself and the subsequent failed appeal were also flawed. The judges ignored evidence that might well have brought an acquittal in the Australian courts, or other properly independent jurisdictions.

The Singapore judges ignored evidence that the arresting and investigating police had themselves broken the law by denying Nguyen Australian consular support before he was interrogated, and had failed to secure the evidentiary drugs that showed significant and unexplained variations when weighed at different times. No action was taken against a senior police officer who gave contradictory testimony.

The trial judge also brushed aside a compelling defence argument that mandatory death sentences — which have helped create a world's-worst-practice of 400 people executed in Singapore since the early 1990s — are a violation of international human rights standards.

Singapore's mandatory sentencing regime also meant no consideration could be given to mitigating circumstances or the character of the defendant. And there was plenty that should have been heard.

Born in a refugee camp in Thailand and raised by a struggling single mother in Melbourne, Nguyen was not a drug addict, a drug trader or even an avaricious "mule" for a drug syndicate. Naive and desperate, he was pressured into making the trip to Cambodia to repay substantial debts owed by his twin brother to loan sharks. Nguyen and his family were threatened before he left Australia.

In the end, Singapore's uncompromising policy on mandatory sentencing made a conviction virtually inevitable, but last week's failure of the petition for a presidential pardon — Nguyen's last lifeline — has raised more disturbing issues.

While the Federal Government gave strenuous support to the application for a pardon, including a personal plea by Howard to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during a visit to Singapore earlier this year, Canberra's increasing ambivalence about capital punishment surely undermined the credibility of its argument.

What is left of principle when one day Australia's Government cheers the death penalty for Bali bombers, on another its police assist in sending accused drug runners to face the death penalty abroad and the next it tries to argue against a hanging on humanitarian grounds?

The refusal of a pardon to Nguyen, dictated by the Singapore cabinet, now stands as a stinging diplomatic rebuff to Howard personally and Australia as a whole. And this from a nation that is supposed to be our best friend in South-East Asia and the neighbour with which we have the strongest strategic, commercial and personal links.

The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister now solemnly shake their heads and lament there is nothing more that can be done. But there is plenty that can be done by Australians who believe state-sanctioned killing — however odious the crime — has no place in a civilised society.

They can boycott Singapore-owned companies such as Optus and Singapore Airlines, they can take their shopping holidays elsewhere, they can protest against the thousands of Singapore military who train on Australian soil and they can start flying to Europe via Bangkok — not a bad idea when a visit to the transit lounge at Changi Airport can finish in a cell at Changi prison.

Mark Baker is opinion editor. He was Asia editor, based in Singapore, from 2001 to 2004 and reported the arrest and trial of Nguyen Tuong Van.

(Lifted wholesale and unedited from The Age without express permission. If you are from The Age and would like me to remove this article, please write me. All credit should go to The Age.)

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

breathe oxygen

wahaha i'm back to ripping off of Oxygen again! if you feel like you need a little spiritual food in your mailbox everyday, don't hesitate to burn 5 calories and clicking this link. trust me la, you won't regret one. this one i copied wholesale from the email i receive daily, sometimes a few hours late, but hey they've got their own lives too yea! as a team they're still really good la. so please enjoy... and give thanks to god for the gift of their ministry.

26 Oct

DEATH AS A LAW OF LIFE


Around us everyday we see many examples of death bringing forth life. A kernel of corn is buried and it grows into a tall cornstalk. The ice cube dissolves and it cools the water. A match burns itself out to light a fire. Water gets itself dirty to clean you. A battery goes dead giving you music and light. Wood burns itself out to cook your food. A tree dies to give you sago. Animals and plants die to give you your food.

By dying, all these things rise to a higher life. This is what Christian mortification is all about.

- Frank Mihalic (1000 Stories You Can Use, Volume Two by Frank Mihalic, SVD)

Will you die to yourself so that others may live?
_____________________

Romans 8:26-30

The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God.

We know that by turning everything to their good God co-operates with all those who love him, with all those that he has called according to his purpose. They are the ones he chose specially long ago and intended to become true images of his Son, so that his Son might be the eldest of many brothers. He called those he intended for this for those he called he justified, and with those he justified he shared his glory.
____________________

Luke 13:22-30

Through towns and villages Jesus went teaching, making his way to Jerusalem. Someone said to him, "Sir, will there be only a few saved?" He said to them, "Try your best to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed.

"Once the master of the house has got up and locked the door, you may find yourself knocking on the door, saying, 'Lord, open to us' but he will answer, 'I do not know where you come from.' Then you will find yourself saying, 'We once ate and drank in your company; you taught in our streets' but he will reply, 'I do not know where you come from. Away from me, all you wicked men!'

"Then there will be weeping and grinding of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves turned outside. And men from east and west, from north and south, will come to take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.

"Yes, there are those now last who will be first, and those now first who will be last."

____________________

More than ten years ago, when I first experienced the gift of tongues, someone told me that the gift of tongues is the only gift of the Holy Spirit which can be used for ourselves, and he used the first part of today's first reading to prove it to me. That was probably the first in many times I've heard that proof being used for the gift of tongues.

What can I say about the gift of tongues, except that it takes tremendous faith to believe that what one is babbling is actually words from the heart to God and that he understands our babble. Someone once scolded me for using the word 'babble', but really, to anyone listening to someone speak in tongues, can they honestly say that it isn't babble to them?

I have encountered maybe a handful of people who truly have the gift of tongues and use it wisely for the good of others. But for every one of these there are hundreds more who believe that they have the gift of tongues and use it for themselves. However, I am no expert on the gifts, so I cannot judge who does and who doesn't really have the gift. Best for me just to avoid it altogether.

Last night, I was thinking of something just before going to sleep. I was thinking about the glory. To be more precise, I was in the loo last night, looking at an ad which spoke of the glory of Rome. It was the ad for a documentary on TV. It showed a woman standing in an ancient Roman city where its roads were running with blood. Is that glory, I asked myself?

Yes. Glory is always accompanied by bloodshed. The glory of Rome was when the Romans shed the blood of those that opposed them, letting it run through the streets of their cities. However, the glory of the Lord was when the Lord shed his own blood for those who opposed him. That's the difference between the glory of the Lord and the glory of men.

So in the first reading, we read that God's Son shared his glory with those he justified, which means to say, those who are with him must also share in his glory by shedding their own blood for those who oppose the Son.

Are we willing to do such a thing? Are we willing to shed our own blood, to sacrifice ourselves so that others may live? Especially if these others are the ones that oppose us?

For those who are not willing, the Lord does not recognise. "Lord, Lord," they say to him, "we went to church every week to share in the meal with you", but he will reply, "Did you share in my glory? Did you give of yourself so that others may live?"

For those that the Son shares his glory with, he justifies them by the gifts he empowers each. These gifts are meant to be used for the good of others, not merely for ourselves. The narrow door is where many will try to enter by, but not succeed, for the only way to enter it is by bringing others to the door at our own expense.

To love others as He has loved us. And He literally loved us to death.
______________________

Prayer: We pray for those who oppose us, that the Lord may be merciful and forgiving to them.

Give Thanks to the Lord for: Sharing his glory with us.

Upcoming Readings:
27 Oct, Thu - Romans 8:31-39; Luke 13:31-35; green
28 Oct, Fri - Ephesians 2:19-22; Luke 6:12-19; Sts. Simon and Jude, apostles; red
29 Oct, Sat - Romans 11:1-2, 11-12, 25-29; Luke 14:1, 7-11; green


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Disclaimer: The reflections expressed in this e-mail are the writer's own. They may not necessarily reflect the teachings of the Catholic Church. Nonetheless we should all be able to learn something from it.