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Dear readers, If you cannot access Temasek Review, the first thing to do is to click on the “Start” button at the bottom left hand corner of your Windows: 1. For Windows 7/Vista, type “cmd” in the text box on the left of the “Shut down” button. 2. For Windows XP, click on the “Run” button and type “cmd” in the text box which pops up. A black window should appear. Type “ping temasekreview.com“, press enter and you should see this: Pinging temasekreview.com [96.31.81.78] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 96.31.81.78:..... If you see "request timed out", it is most likely that you have been banned by our firewall for multiple connections. In this instance, clear your browser's history, cookies and cache and reboot your PC to re-access our site again or email [email protected] and state the IP address you are on so that our tech can remove your IP from our firewall. If the IP address after you ping our site shows 96.31.81.78 and you still cannot access our site, try this: Type "ipconfig/flushdns" in the cmd, clear your cache and cookies and reboot your PC again. We will be posting all updates pertaining to our site on our Facebook here ADMINISTRATOR  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent Senior Minister of State for National Development Grace Fu told Parliament today that there are adequate housing, facilities and infrastructure to meet the demands of a growing population. However, there are cases where short-term demand is not met because it is very hard to "predict" such demand, such as for housing. "This is because there is always a lead time involved," she said without elaborating more on it. The National Development Ministry led by Mr Mah Bow Tan had come under intense criticisms from the public of late due to the shortage of public housing for Singaporeans which is exacerbated by a growing population contributed largely by the relentless influx of foreigners. The floodgates appear to open a few years ago when Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced an ambitious plan to increase Singapore's population to 6.5 million people via immigration. A quick check on the HDB Infoweb reveals that the number of HDB flats built between the years 2005 - 2008 are fewer than the preceding four years. In the face of rising demand and limited supply of flats, the prices of HDB flats sky-rocketed in Singapore, reaching a record peak high in June last year. Mr Mah admitted lately that he was "caught off guard" by the spike in prices and reassured Singaporeans that HDB flats will remain "affordable" to the majority of the population. Despite repeated reassurances from HDB and government ministers, there is a prevailing sentiment on the ground that ordinary Singaporeans are being priced out of reach in the public housing market. Even for those who can afford to pay for these over-priced flats, they will probably have to deplete their CPFs in order to do so. The situation is worsened by PRs who "spoil" the market by paying higher than market prices for resale flats. For example, one Indonesian PR forked out $653,000 for a four-room resale flat in Queenstown when he could well afford a private apartment. As prices of new flats are pegged to the recent transaction of resale flats in the vicinity, this contributes indirectly to the high prices fetched by two BTO projects launched in Queenstown lately with an average price of more than $500,000 for four-room flats and $600,000 for five room flats. According to Mohamad Ismail, the CEO of real estate agency Propnex, as high as 20 per cent of the buyers of resale flats are PRs. Another agency C&H Realty quoted a figure as high as 50 per cent, yet Mr Mah claimed that PRs form only a "small proportion" of the buyers of resale flats. Some PRs eventually sell their flats for a generous profit after they leave Singapore for their homeland where they can retire comfortably for the rest of their lives while locals continue to pay the high price for the ruling party's pro foreigner policy. Being the highest paid ministers in the world, it is unforgivable for Mr Mah and Ms Fu not to foresee the rise in HDB prices with more foreigners coming into Singapore. Furthermore, the Singapore cabinet is blessed with a "forecaster extraordinarie" who does nothing much other than to "do forecasting." Perhaps he should spend more time "mentoring" the junior ministers to ensure they don't make such a disastrous mistake again instead of flying around the world to lecture others on how to run their countries.  Read More →

By Benjamin Bland from Asian Correspondent Midnight 9th January 2010, The Online Citizen's website has been incapacitated by what is known as a DDOS (Denial-of-Service). This means that a hacker (or group of hackers) bombard a website with so many requests for information that it crashes. This is the first such attack on The Online Citizen but another leading alternative news website in Singapore, the Temasek Review, has come under such attack on several occasions in the last few months which prompted them to beef up their system security and firewall capabilities. What is going on here? The unwashed pyjama-clad conspiracy brigade like to believe that Singapore's much-feared but rarely seen Internal Security Department is behind these moves to disrupt Singapore's nascent independent news providers. Given the many more discrete tools at their disposal, I find it extremely doubtful that the government would use such a blunt method. If they really wanted to disrupt the citizen journalism scene, I expect they would require all "political" news websites to register and put up a "security bond" of several thousand dollars or bring a libel/contempt of court case against one of the websites to send waves of fear coursing through the still-cautious Singaporean blogosphere. More likely is that some pesky delinquent - and there is no shortage of tech savvy, disaffected youths in Singapore - has decided it would be fun to take down a few prominent websites. And that, in many respects, is a compliment to the growing power of sites like The Online Citizen and Temasek Review. Comment trolls (who spout abuse or proffer porn links in the comments section) and web hackers are the online equivalents of the green-ink brigade, the scathing if often less than coherent correspondents who pass their days by writing into newspapers and TV news stations to complain of perceived inaccuracies and bias while usually serving up a healthy dose of invective and abuse. If they (whoever they may be) are bothering to try and take you down, then you must be doing something right, so keep up the good work. Ben Bland Jakarta, Indonesia Source: Asian Correspondent  Read More →