Wednesday, May 29, 2013

No News Is Good News

You can tell Yaacob Ibrahim is still sore with the internet. How else would we ever learn that the Minister in charge of Muslim Affairs was once courting a Puerto Rican lass instead of a nice Muslim girl? Julian Assange, look out, a fatwa could be on your way anytime soon!

Ibrahim is targeting not just websites with "significant reach" - defined as having 50,000 unique visitors per month - he is aiming to amend the Broadcasting Act "with the view to ensure that any other sites which are hosted overseas but reporting on Singapore news is also brought in the licensing framework." Which means The Financial Times (FT) which reported on Shane Todd's untimely death will have to apply for a licence from the Media Development Authority (MDA) and put up a performance bond of $50,000. FT, and other overseas sites, may very soon have to comply within 24 hours any MDA directive to remove content found to be "in breach of standards".

The example of prohibited content quoted was the "gory" car crash images of an accident at Tampines Avenue 7. The video of an intern punched viciously by a supervisor with anger management issues apparently passes muster with the minister. Frankly, the real objectionable stuff is telling pork chop soup and free smoke jokes at a formal dinner gathering in Washington.

The MDA assures us that the new regulation will not apply to blogs, though adding: "If they take on the nature of news sites, we will take a closer look and evaluate them accordingly". The following picture is gory, but takes place overseas - a live birth at a hospital parking lot - nothing like the boring stuff going on in Singapore. Florida based Emily Robinson was hired by South Florida Sun Sentinel photojournalist Amy Beth Cavaretta and her husband, photojournalist Joe Cavaretta, to document the delivery of Cavaretta’s second child on last Friday. Baby was in a hurry, hence the outdoor impromptu shots. Thank God for the internet.
Robinson's pictures going viral on the internet

20 comments:

  1. Those writing from overseas about Singapore will not give a damn to MDA.

    Can MDA stop Julian Assange ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've never been so ashamed as a Singaporean living in the 21st century of internet convergence until now. This regressive rule only proves that this bunch of sand-burying ostriches living in their own ivory tower are utterly out of touch with the citizens, or we must be the most cynical people in the whole world.

    Go ahead Freedom Index, just tank us right to the bottom of 179th.

    ReplyDelete
  3. http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20130529-425774.html

    80% are disgusted by the news.

    Methinks any MP who doesn't come up with a policy/update that can get at least 50,000 likes from its citizens to prove they are serving its people with sound and good policies/works, we should not give them any license to run in the next GE. Just like their work, they should be retired into the history bin where they belong.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anything they can regulate, they will regulate. Those they cannot or do not know how to regulate, they will pass. We are in a race backwards and downwards and very soon will end up in middle ages control by the few privileged elites.

    (Therefore you have to control beliefs and attitudes, it’s the next best thing... If you read the founding documents of the PR industry, they say: ‘We have to make sure that the general public are incompetent, they are like children, if you let them run their own affairs they will get into all kind of trouble. Noam Chowsky)

    ReplyDelete
  5. All news site should move to FB. They can't track your analytics.

    Bloggers should move sites to Iceland, a truly forward country that respects rights of the internet and its citizens.

    ReplyDelete
  6. A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad. ~Albert Camus~

    Many people recognise that there is an ever increasing vacuum of accountability, that ethical standards and principles have long been abandoned and that politicians have become mesmerised by power. In circumstances like that information and access to it, is the only thing that can check the exercise of that power. Information gives the ordinary person on the street a chance to be their own watchdog and a sense of empowerment.

    In democratic societies a free and diverse media enables public debate and provides essential checks on power. Not only is there a right to know, there is a right to tell.

    Information is essential for mutual understanding, to right wrongs and in fact to prevent them from occurring, and to improve the health of our political systems and corporate structures. But in the name of freedom and democracy, governments the world over would like to convince us otherwise.

    Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. This universal right has never been fully respected in practice because the powerful do not like to be constrained.

    ---

    The PAP do not deserve to lead us into the new world.

    ReplyDelete
  7. No amount of sorry will make up for this hedious act. PM Lee can come off his Instagram or Tumbler wayang.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Errr.... Tattler, so do you intend to put up a performance bond with MDA?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. don't disguise censorship bond with performance bond. This is totally nothing to do with performance.

      Delete
  9. You are paying millions and getting such pathetic ideas and measures to control content.

    Instead of cleaning up their act, we see such vain attempts to justify non-transparency and accountability.

    It's laughable. What's next? Bar access to internet sites?

    faber

    ReplyDelete
  10. the list of economic failures are adding up, so it is just the right time to tighten the noose flow; lucky we have the internet, so you have an unbiased view here.

    So here we go:
    First casinos lose money, and they talk of clamp down online betting
    Then the icon of the new Singapore aka the Singapore Flyer kicks the bucket! Bankrupt! Hush hush, news black out.
    And just when they were preparing to celebrate the grand opening of the new Marina Business Centre, the occupancy of which depended so much on poaching Switzerland Luxembourg and Lichtenstein's wealth management business, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalist exposed that SG-based Portcullis Trust Net chaired by the good ambassador to Switzerland HE Tee Tua Ba was at the centre of international money laundering. So the decade boom in wealth management officially came to an end when the US and European tax collectors squeeze Kojak and sham to handover the list of tax evaders. And there goes the FT wealth managers rushing to buy their first SQ ticket to HK.
    Then Indonesia followed and stick a finger at temasek and said to DBS, "Akan datang" for that majority control of Danamon. And one analyst was scratching her head asking why Indon govt wanted "reciprocal access" to Singapore. The Indon regulator was of course talking about access to the assets and the list of Indon tax evaders.

    More than any Ft from India Pinoy land or PRC, the loss of laundered money will be the last straw that breaks the camel's back. No wonder all the napier Rd $350m bungalows are suddenly in a rush to sell. Like 93FM, the elites hears the correct news, for the rest, you need the internet.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Machiavellee
    ●Problem

    1) May 9th, 2011
    catherinelim.sg » How GE 2011 proved me—oh, so wonderfully!—wrong

    2) Wed, Oct 5, 2011
    GE2011 The internet election that wasn’t - Yahoo! News Singapore

    "Yet, the study's researchers -- IPS deputy director Arun Mahizhnan, senior research fellow Tan Tarn How and director of the Singapore
    Internet Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Ang Peng Hwa -- stressed that while findings showed the GE was not an "Internet election", it does not mean policymakers and politicians should ignore citizens who obtain their news from the internet."

    3) Wednesday, Oct 05, 2011
    Six PAP Central Executive Committee members step down

    4) Sun, Dec 2, 2012
    PAP elects new Central Executive Committee


    An introduction,

    The Hegelian Dialectic
    (source)
    http://www.jeremiahproject.com/newworldorder/hegelian-dialectic.html

    Problem - Reaction - Solution

    “It works like this – the manipulating body covertly creates a problem and then directs the media to incessantly focus on it without recourse.
    The problem could be anything – a war, a financial collapse, a rash of child abductions, or a terrorist attack. The power of the media can
    create the false perception that a big problem exists, even if it doesn’t … Once you have created this problem you make sure that an
    individual, a group or an aspect of society is blamed. This then rallies the population behind the desperate lunge for a solution to the problem.

    (links)
    1) http://catherinelim.sg/2011/05/09/how-ge-2011-proved-me-oh-so-wonderfully-wrong/
    2) http://sg.news.yahoo.com/ge2011--the-internet-election-that-wasn%E2%80%99t.html
    3) http://singaporedesk.blogspot.sg/2011/10/exit-plans.html
    4) http://sg.news.yahoo.com/pap-elects-new-central-executive-committee--090454384.html

    ReplyDelete
  12. con't,
    ●Reaction
    a)18 July 2010
    Shadrake was arrested on charges of 'criminal defamation' on 18 July 2010, a day after the publication of his book, Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, which was critical of the Singapore judicial system.[3]

    b) 8 Dec 2011
    Ex-MP Choo Wee Khiang charged with corruption
    "Choo was not only an ex-MP, but an ex-convict as well. What’s absurd is he had a stint as STTA President from 1992 to 1998, was jailed in 1999 for 2 weeks, fined $10,000 and barred from elections for FIVE years, and then RE-ELECTED back as President in 2002. What gives? In 2009, he was even awarded the ‘International Olympic Committee President’s Trophy’ at the Singapore Sports Awards, all this while he was making quick grubby bucks under the table. Here’s a sample of his testimonial:"

    c) Sun, Feb 12, 2012
    School principal, top civil servants among 80 involved in online vice probe: reports - Yahoo! News Singapore

    d)March 30, 2012
    Up to sixty men may soon charged for having sex with a voluptuous teenage model whose ‘services’ were marketed on a porn site after an online vice ring was busted three months ago.

    e)Apr 16, 2012
    Second man in high-profile sex scandal allowed to travel - Yahoo! News Singapore
    Lee Lip Hong, 39, the former principal of Pei Chun Public School, admitted to two charges of having paid $500 on each of two occasions for sex with the girl under 18 at Hotel 81 Bencoolen on Sept 26 and Dec 24, 2010, reported the same paper.
    In February, up to 80 people were involved in a major police probe into an online prostitution ring, including an ex-principal and top civil servants.

    f)June 5, 2012
    Former Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) chief Ng Boon Gay was charged in court on Tuesday(June 5, 2012), with four counts of corruption involving sex with a woman seeking government contracts.
    His charges come a one week after former Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) commissioner Peter Lim was charged with 10 counts under the the Prevention of Corruption Act in a similar, but separate sex-for-contracts corruption case.
    Lim was also accused of receiving sexual favours in exchange for helping three women further their business dealings with the SCDF.
    The CPIB arrested Ng and Lim last December and January this year respectively. They were suspended from duty from Jan 25.

    g) 2008, written for the Human Rights Quarterly
    Confining the Freedom of the Press in Singapore: A “Pragmatic” Press for “Nation-Building”?

    2010, article in the Common Law World Review
    "Death Penalty Singapore-Style: Clinical and Carefree"
    (source)
    Fixing the Opposition Again? Please don’t be fooled by the Latest Sex Scandal!

    h)July 27, 2012
    National University of Singapore associate law professor Tey Tsun Hang was charged Friday (July 27, 2012) morning with six counts of corruption in a sex-for-grades scandal. .....................

    It was disclosed in court on Friday that Tey had been taken in for questioning by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau on Thursday morning and released only after midnight.
    On Friday, an NUS spokesperson said that the university has started an investigation into the case and suspended Tey from active duty.


    Joshua Chiang

    ReplyDelete
  13. Machiavellee
    ●Problem
    con't,
    (links)
    a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Shadrake
    b) http://everythingalsocomplain.com/2011/12/08/ex-mp-choo-wee-khiang-charged-with-corruption/
    c) http://sg.news.yahoo.com/80-people-being-investigated-in-online-vice-probe--report.html
    d) http://temasektimes.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/60-men-may-be-charged-for-having-sex-with-underaged-c-cup-sexy-teen-model-marketed-on-online-vice-ring/
    e) http://sg.news.yahoo.com/44-men-charged-for-having-sex-with-minor.html
    f) http://forums.vr-zone.com/chit-chatting/2228252-ex-cnb-chief-ng-boon-gay-faces-4-sex-favours-corruption-charges.html
    g) http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?123517-Fixing-the-Opposition-Again-Please-don%E2%80%99t-be-fooled-by-the-Latest-Sex-Scandal!
    h) http://notesfromnoosphere.blogspot.sg/2012/07/legal-scholar-critical-of-singapore.html
    http://temasektimes.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/exposed-malaysian-tey-tsun-hang-was-a-white-horse-in-the-system/

    others,
    http://www.singapore-window.org/sw00/000614ug.htm
    http://feedmetothefish.blogspot.sg/2012/07/who-blew-whistle.html
    http://sg.news.yahoo.com/top-foreign-ministry-official-suspended--probed-by-cad.html
    http://sg.news.yahoo.com/singapore-civil-servant-facing-455-fraud-charges-090816963.html
    http://gintai.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/certis-cisco-cash-and-valuables-missing-from-safe-deposit-box/
    http://www.freag.net/en/t/3m04g/why_did_lee_abo
    http://therealsingapore.com/content/mha-power-struggle-conspiracy-and-collateral-damage
    http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/63889470-post1155.html
    http://singaporeconsensus.wordpress.com/

    Joshua Chiang

    ReplyDelete
  14. why this bedok kampung boy so smart? or so bodoh?

    seem to like angmoh chabors Bery much???

    they smell like the kampung dumping ground?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Isn't it obvious those examples of concern they gave are red herrings ?

    What pisses our PAP leaders most ? Those really 'hard truth' news that can't match the Shit Times in terms of honesty ?

    ReplyDelete
  16. PAP is up to their dirty tricks again. What the fuck did he say sorry for ?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Joshua Chiang, stop spamming with your long essay post and links.
    If you have comments to make, just get to your point lah.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Keppel also declared a final cash dividend of 36 Singapore cents per share, up from a final dividend of 30 cents per share in 2013.For the full year, Keppel’s net profit was up 2.1 per cent to S$1.88 billion. sgx trading

    ReplyDelete