TR EMERITUS

OPINION It must be a long, weary and terrible week for Ris Low since the state media broke the story of her past conviction last Friday. Already a household name in Singapore for her less than perfect English, she was propelled to international fame in a matter of days after she made the fateful decision to give up her hard fought Miss Singapore crown. International new agencies Reuters, ABC news, Fox news and the Daily Telegraph all reported on the matter. "Ris Low" become one of the most searched names on google with more than 3,000 visitors being led to our site yesterday via google news and the search engine itself. Ris Low may not be the ideal candidate to represent Singapore in the Miss World competition, but she does not deserve to suffer the ignominy of being humiliated and literally lynched in the media which has been harping on the issue for the last few days. Are we becoming a nation of sadists to indulge in outright gloating over the misfortunes of a fellow citizen? Try putting yourself in her shoes and you will not fathom to be in her position for a single day. A 19 year old teenager having her flaws, mistakes and even medical condition exposed and blown out of proportion in public - how is she going to face the world in the future? It is only human to err. As ERM World had explained clearly in defence of Ris, she performed very well in the competition. The person who uploaded her video on youtube had malicious intent to protray her in a bad light. What made the entire saga more strange and suspicious is the journalist who took the effort to dig out her past conviction. Surely he/she must either be a friend of Ris or was tipped off by her friend who was obviously not on good terms with her and plotted to wreck her dreams of representing Singapore. The deliberate labeling or mislabeling of her photo on the digital edition of Straits Times as "sg-stupid.jpg" is absolutely despicable, disgusting and disgraceful. The culprit still dare not step forward and apologize for his/her indiscretion. Such is the character and caliber of the journalists we have been running along the corridors of the Singapore Press Holdings building at Braddell. Some may argue that she is unqualified to take part in the international beauty pageant, but it is not for the public or the media to judge. If there wasn't so much negative publicity about her, the authorities may just allow her to leave for South Africa in December and there will not be so much public pressure on the organizers to rescind her title. Even if she is eventually stripped of her crown, the public fallout can be minimized without the media fueling the emotions of Singaporeans by adding oil to fire. Instead of going about a media witch-hunt to cause unnecessary hurt, pain and suffering to an innocent, harmless and defenceless girl, the controversies can be dealt with in a more prudent, mature and agreeable manner. The Singapore media should be ashamed of its role in the fiasco which is utterly unprofessional, deplorable and regrettable for the inordinate amount of time and attention placed on it when there are so many important national issues to discuss. While SPH journalists have the time, energy and resources to delve into Ris Low's past, they are unable or unwilling to check and confirm if the two CDC staff did receive a 8 month bonus not too long ago. Actually, this is not surprising since they only pick the easy targets whom they can fix at will without getting themselves into trouble. For those critics of Ris Low, please remember that when you point a finger at others, four fingers are pointing back towards yourself. Her English may not be perfect, but how many of us do speak impeccable standard English in our daily lives? It was dead wrong of her to use the credit cards of her clients, but it may be contributed partly by her medical condition which explains why she only get a slap on her wrist. She has already paid a price for her actions and duly punished for it. What more do we want from her? Unless we are saints like Buddha or Jesus, none of us are infallible and therefore we are in no position to criticize or judge her. Perhaps it should serve to remind us of our own vulnerabilities as human beings. A little kindness, compassion and love will go a long way to lessen the pain and agony of this poor girl who has been overly punished for her mistake of not revealing her past conviction when she signed up for the competition. Let's hope she will put this unhappy episode behind her and continue fighting for her dreams. Ris, you still have a long way to go in your life. Ignore what those losers are saying behind your back and move on for life is much more than a beauty pageant. May you and your family find peace and strength in this difficult period of your lives.  Read More →

By Malaysia Today’s technical team With so much confusion and speculation making its rounds about what is happening to Malaysia Today over more than a week, we are compelled to offer our explanation so that the record can be set straight. Only limited technical details will be mentioned to allow you to appreciate the scale of challenge the site is facing. You may now be aware that the site has been up and down since Friday, 17 September 2009. This was due to malicious activities by those behind the effort to cripple Malaysia Today. This is just one of the many rounds of cyber-attacks that we at Malaysia Today have had to face for more than a year now. Coincidentally, this latest round of attacks started immediately after RPK’s explosive expose two weeks ago on Tuesday regarding the Malaysian Cabinet's knowledge and 'approval' of the PKFZ scandal long before it became public knowledge. Suspicious activities against the site happened as early as Wednesday, but the first damage was done in the afternoon of Thursday, which brought the site down. The site was quickly recovered and by 6.00pm we were up and running again although with some loss of data. The attack revolved around the long-time problem faced by the site - a rather old version of Joomla content management system and the use of third-party components. Lack of resources (financial, manpower, etc.) has always been a challenge faced by Malaysia Today, which affected the maintenance and operations of the site. During the recovery process, we locked down the site to reduce the danger of further compromises. The next wave of attacks came the following day on Friday. This time it was in a wave of DDoS traffic crippling one of our nodes at Singapore. The Singapore node operates with about 30Mbps of bandwidth, a luxury by Malaysian standards but far short if we need to match any serious DDoS attacks. The node was basically choked with illegitimate traffic. Typical of DDoS network attacks, the origin of the attacks is difficult to pinpoint and sometimes pointless as the attack agents/zombies are likely compromised systems themselves. We then activated our resources at our US node to recover the site. The process required optimisation of the site to cope with demand. (The demand on the site seemed much higher, possibly due to the interest on the PKFZ expose.) Hence the intermittent site outage, due to either overloading or optimisation process. Being a service provider of a larger scale and sophistication, the US node has a higher capability of sustaining the attacks. Still, the attacks persisted on a daily basis and we tried deflecting them as far as we could. The DDoS traffic we suffered ranged from 227Mbps to 835Mbps, a mammoth scale for anyone familiar with maintaining Internet sites. The attacker does not appear interested in defacing the website, typical of self-styled college hackers. He/she just deleted articles published on Malaysia Today, literally one by one, with the single-minded aim of erasing all the explosive stuff on the site. Further complicating the trace of attacks is the use of free proxy servers, on random basis, by the attackers. This is an irony, as we have been advising our users to use such proxy servers to overcome any potential content filtering by the government. All the malicious activities and behaviours bear the hallmark of professional, for-hire hackers. These are certainly no amateurs, judging from the persistence and frequency of the attacks, with the main objective of making the content of Malaysia Today inaccessible to the public. We believe that there is NO explicit blocking of the site by the various Malaysian ISPs. The inconsistent and intermittent accessibility of the site in the past many days are the result of the situation described above, although we must caution that it is almost impossible to detect any clandestine censorship. The MCMC has in the past failed to silence Malaysia Today officially through blocking it in August 2008. Now, with even more revelations of various scandals of the government exposed through this site, we can't help but suspect that there is a more significant force, a hidden hand at play aimed at bringing down Malaysia Today. - Malaysia Today  Read More →

作者：新加坡文献馆 新加坡的所谓高薪养廉政策在政治内涵上的实质性是高薪领养政策维护者。 新加坡资深报人余长年在littlespeck.com有多篇时事评论点出李光耀以高薪招揽人马加入人民行动党的各种弊病：‘他们不缺乏头脑但很缺少能夠和人民建立密切关系或者能夠同情体恤人民的政治属性’；‘吸引了不适当的人士从政，这些人士之所以会选择加入人民行动党是因为可以稳操胜券并确保前途光明；他们缺乏加入反对党面对挑战的勇气与精神’。 前海峡时报新闻编辑Yeo Toon Joo，2007年5月4日的一封致政府的公开信内也提及李光耀的高薪政策：‘李光耀的理由是除非你支付很高的薪金来吸引最好的头脑要不然是不可能招揽优 质天份的人士成为国家领袖，留下他们或者使到他们不会去贪污。但是问题却出现在李光耀是往一个错的场所寻找领导人才，他也采用了一些错的政策防止那些有潜 质领导人才的出现…若干年前有人说过：最佳的贪腐方法是让他丰衣足食使他成为你的奴隶（是李光耀说的吗？）讽刺性的是，李光耀在确保他的人马跨越贪污的同时也一并收买了他们的灵魂… 寻找未来领袖不应该只局限在优越学术成绩条件；优秀学术表现不等同有效率的领袖素质…寻找那些具有善良之心能夠体恤别人，尤其是对不幸的新加坡人有恻隐之 心，他们必须有满腔的热忱去帮助自已的国人，意愿做出艰巨的个人牺牲和具有刚强的意志…’。 李光耀的高薪领养政治雇佣兵是一个严重的错误政策，对新加坡社会民生有很大的负面影响。天地不交为否，天水一方为讼，否讼皆凶险之兆。从政者不能体恤社会低层的水深火热更无能有效解决社会民生困境，那不论在政治或者在道义上也就失去了领导的资格以及做为领导的尊严，因为从政者的一项基本责任就是有效解决民生困境。从政者不愿或无能听取民意也 就无从了解社会民生困难之处並从而给于适度的纾困：这就是政府与人民各执一词各说各话的当今现实状况。 从新加坡主流媒体看新加坡，情势依然是一片大好而人民行动党的江山还是如此多娇。然而，社会里的真实情况却是每况愈下而对于社会最低层的人民而言他们是否已近于民不聊生？ 在现有的新加坡模式规范下今日的新加坡不只在经济上呈两极化：富者越富贫者更贫。在政治上政府政策和民生意愿的背道而驰也越离越远。在公司必须有赢余以确保供给不断的政经思维下人民的生活成本和政治精英的高薪一起日益高潮。 按余长年的说法来进一步推论：政治精英的薪金越高，其所吸引的从政者越可能是不适当的人选。这个推测看来是颇为正确的，因为开年以来就有多起这类实据反映出为官者不知民间疾苦的真实状况。 09 年5月6日的一则时事新闻报导了一名有智障并且长期患病的17岁青年因破坏执政党议员接见居民办事处的玻璃门而遭警方逮捕。这是一个单亲的家庭靠母亲当清 洁工过活，但母亲近日因工伤而停职所以向议员寻求财务帮助。据网上资讯，青年是因为不满母亲所遭遇的不礼貌对待而怒火中烧并因而破坏公物。事后，青年手写 道歉书要求该选区的原有议员原谅错失，但却遭拒绝。一份网贴以‘一名低智商青年对抗两名低情商议员’为题撰写评论。诚然，低智商与低情商是颇为贴切与传神 的体现了这起事件中两造的不同：青年虽然低智商但却能夠体现了关心爱护母亲的情商，而两名高智商的女议员却看来无能表现体恤贫苦家庭辛酸苦辣的情商。 09 年5月8日的一则新闻报导了前新加坡乒乓教头刘国栋考虑对乒总采取法律行动。事缘乒总在给全国奥运理事会的信中指刘国栋缺乏专业，缺乏专业、道德规范和赢 得球员尊重的能力。刘国栋回应说得不得（最佳教练）奖无所谓‘我被诬蔑！要找律帅讨回公道！’。新加坡民众在这起事件中是一面倒的同情刘国栋的遭遇：‘过 去20年来，我们一直希望获得奥运奖牌，最后，奖牌来了。但是，说他没赢得球员尊敬，或者球员不喜欢他，是最没风度的说法’；‘既然乒总将刘国栋说得那么不堪，当初为何又愿意和刘国栋续约呢？’；‘如果这是因为个人恩怨而作出的决定，这是新加坡体育的最悲惨的一天’。事件的源头是在北京奥运，当时刚上任乒总会长的人民行动党女议员因为不满比赛过程中的一些安排而在现场开除了一名经理並否定了刘国栋续约乒总的可行性。这种大动作处理问题的手法是这起事端的基本原因。这也就是新加坡政治文化里的所谓小李光耀现象。 09年2月过后也先后有两起涉及人民不满人民行动党议员的事故。其一是一 名年长者因为不满议员处理事情的态度而怒火中烧以易燃物火烧议员；而该名议员在前些时候也同样因为处理事情不当而刺激一名高龄者重拳攻击。为何这些本应该 在家中安享晚年的乐龄人士会因为不堪刺激而动用暴力？另一个案则是一名捡破烂的汉子在投诉电话里表示恐怕自已因为不能容忍一名人民行动党女议员而会对她采 取攻击行动的谈话而在电话恐吓罪名下被控上法庭並被判入狱。 或许许多人已经忘记了就在不久前当金融风暴还未吹袭时经济情况还算可 以得过且过之际，一名正当壮年的失业汉不就因为向国会议员，市镇理事会等等官方渠道求救无门之后跳轨轻生。这家人长期以方便面过日子，失业汉在离家跳轨前 把身上仅存的几块钱交给幼儿，吩咐儿子为家人买包鸡饭回家当晚餐。这是一名即将轻生的壮汉所能为自已的家人做到的最后一件事：一顿简单却亲情浓郁的最后晚 餐。 与此同时，新加坡人也或许不会忘记一名政治精英如何在报章上炫耀自己的高尚生活品味，妻子是名高层商业精英儿子即将到美国长青藤大学念书等社会成就，夸夸其谈曰作为精英高层可以享有长期假日，以及一家三口如何花费巨额学费到巴黎学习烹饪高级法国料理。 朱门酒肉臭，路有冻死骨，荣枯咫尺异，惆帐难再述是描绘社会走向秩序崩溃的先兆。这种非常新加坡现象是否正常？是否应该理所当然？为何低层社会的民众不能容 忍他们的国会代议士？是人民的素质因为教育失败而越变越差？又或者是李光耀高薪领养政策吸引了不适当的从政者？在半个世纪前有一套中国影片名为出卖影子的 人，故事是说主角出卖自已的影子向财神爺换取财富。如今新加坡这些缺乏情商的从政者是否只是为了财富而成为李光耀政策的维护者？如今新加坡的从政者是否不 再以解决社会问题为主要责任？这些或许就是高薪领养的必然社会代价。  Read More →