TR EMERITUS

From our Correspondent According to the latest figures released by the police, more girls under the age of 14 are having sex, and the number having STDs and abortions have risen. Sex with a girl under the age of 18 is against the law even if the sex is consensual regardless of the girl's nationality. Some Singaporeans have been jailed for accepting sexual services from underaged girls. With the advent of the internet and online pornography, teenagers are becoming sexually active and promiscuous at a younger age, much to the horror of their parents. To compound matters, many of them have little knowledge about contraception and are having unprotected sex contributing to the rise in HIV/STDs among the youth. The issue of sexual education was raised in the recent Aware debacle in which the leading feminist NGO in Singapore came under attacks for its "liberal" views on sex. Though MOE suspended the programme subsequently, the episode shows how ignorant and ill-prepared Singapore parents are to educate their children about sex. Many are embarrassed to discuss sexuality matters with their children and prefers to leave them to teachers in schools. However, as one teacher wrote to the Straits Times lately, they have a limited time for sex education and complex values linked to sex cannot be covered in a few hours. (read article here) Questions such as, 'What is the right age?', 'Should I abstain or is safe sex good enough?', or online permutations of the discussion such as: 'Is online sex wrong? Is it okay to marry, commit adultery, then divorce many times over, as long as you do so online?', she wrote. "What's more, discussing intimate issues with a class of 20 teens is no bed of roses. It's worse when they are completely uninterested because they think they know better, or when they are up for lewd jokes." Singaporean teens are now "well-exposed" to sex at a young age, with many of them knowing more "stuff" than their teachers from a different generation. Rather than concentrating on abstinence and morality alone, which have been shown to be ineffective in reducing pre-marital sex, teenagers should be taught on practical methods to prevent pregnancy and STDs. A recent study shows that 20% of Singaporeans have sex before the age of 21. The actual figure may actually be higher.  Read More →

By Michael Freedman from Newsweek Why is it that increasingly shrill right-wing attacks on Barack Obama almost invariably cast him as a nasty European? Last July, Rush Limbaugh, the radio pundit with almost 15 million weekly listeners, said Obama's comments on the campaign trail reveal he "would prefer to be running for president of a Western European country" because he "prefers socialism over capitalism". Sean Hannity (13.8 million weekly listeners) said Obama "seems to agree with the European, anti-American sentiment" and accused the president of building "the United States of France." He and others mocked Obama as unmanly for putting Dijon mustard on a sandwich, before the critiques entered a darker phase. Now, conservatives are finding echoes of Nazi Germany in Obama's push to provide universal health coverage, and to fight against misinformation about his plans. Limbaugh complains that "Obama is asking citizens to rat each other out like Hiter did." Fox News's Glenn Beck recedntly rolled footage of Hitler exorting Nazi masses and then teared up as he compared America to Weimar Germany as a state on the verge of economic collapse and said time could soon come when Washington will simply cut health care for the elderly and disabled, and just let them die. Ever since America split from Britain, it has harbored a camp that sees Europe as an incubator of degenerate regimes. Loathing of King George was soon replaced by fear on the right of the French Revolution, giving rise to what scholar Justin Vaisse calls "the stereotype of an unstable and illiberal country," and an enduring case of Francophobia. World War II would add a new twist - the French as the "surrender monkeys" American comics lampooned during the Iraq War, the Germans and Hitler as the model for controlling evil, the Russians and Stalin as the archetype for murderous statism. It is probably due to its early European roots that Americans never ridicule their politicians as Maoists. But Europhobia has never gone too deep. As much as Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists came to fear the French Revolution, Thomas Jefferson admired it. And attacks on Obama as too European resonate only with latter day Hamiltonians. More than 60 per cent of Americans now view France as an ally, compared with just 18 per cent in 2006, according to an August poll from Rasmussen. Only 53 per cent say capitalism is better than socialism, and 59 per cent say the health care in the U.S. is no better than in other industralized nations. Most Americans believe that the U.S. has a lot to learn from the continent and tend not to see Hitler's hand in Obama's policy briefs. Source: Newsweek  Read More →

By Bhaskaran Kunju, Political Correspondent Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s National Day Message for 2009 was broadcast on August 8, a day before National Day, on all Mediacorp TV and radio stations. The message in Mandarin was delivered by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng, while the Malay and Tamil language messages were delivered by Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources and Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs, and K. Shanmugam, Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs respectively. PM Lee began his address touching on the ongoing recession. He highlighted the difficulties the nation faces and the measures that had been implemented by the Government to combat the economic downturn, including moving the National Budget up to January. His mention of the estimate of a 6% to 9% drop in the GDP for the year is significantly higher than that of analysts, who place it at around 3%. The government has always placed great emphasis on being prepared for the worst, thus the higher estimate allows for a buffer should the economy worsen. Though it was not mentioned in the message the country’s foreign reserves has already been tapped for the first time as well, something that was not resorted to even during the last financial crisis of 1997. He also mentioned the nation’s level of unemployment remaining as one of the lowest in the world. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Manpower, the unemployment levels as of June stands at 3.3%, which is up from the same period last year when it was at 2.2%. Despite political and economical struggles over the past couple of years, Thailand’s level of unemployment is only at 2.1%, lower than that of Singapore’s. But Singapore’s unemployment level is still one of the lowest in the world and significantly better than that of countries with a similar economy. The hardest hit has been the manufacturing sector, though retrenchment rate has contracted slightly overall in the last quarter. PM Lee cautioned against overt optimism saying, it was “too early to celebrate”. The rate of recovery is still dependent on the improvements of advanced markets who are only now showing signs of recovery. Warning against another possible wave of layoffs, he used the struggles of SIA as an example. A report on Channel Newsasia on July 30 stated that the carrier posted a net loss for its first fiscal quarter of $307 million, compared to a profit of SG$359 million just a year before. It was the first such loss since 2003 during the SARS crisis. In a February 16 Straits Times report, the company stated that retrenchment would only be used as a last resort. Drawing on the experiences of the past, the Prime Minister called the nation to rally together in these difficult times. He included the term, ‘new arrivals’, which is either a synonym to the more commonly used ‘new citizens’ or an amalgamation of ‘new citizens’ and non-citizens. Whichever it is, it is significant as it is the first instance that a National Day Message had included this category of Singapore’s population. This emphasis was evident in another part of the speech when he talked about “Our forefathers (who) were different peoples from different lands” and how their coming together through hardships and challenges had brought the nation closer together. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew followed this up in his own address at the National Day Dinner at his Tanjong Pagar constituency on August 13, where the highlight of his speech was his reiteration on the need for foreigners, PRs and new citizens and the importance of accepting them into society. This call for inclusion is not without reason and acceptance by the general population and unity is one of two. The other being the possibility that in the progressive stages of the recession, the hardest hit would be the highest stratum of the economy, which coincidently comprises a large portion of foreigners or ‘new arrivals’. An article in The Times in January cited a Credit Suisse estimate that as much as 200,000 foreigners could leave the country, shrinking the nation’s population by 3%. This sudden departure would of course have adverse spillover effects in the long term socially and economically. Hence it makes rational sense that there is no better time than now to practice inclusiveness of this group, that is still seen as intrusive by a significant portion of the population. The Prime Minister also touched on the ongoing battle against containing Influenza A (H1N1) and the success in delaying the spread of the virus. In this aspect the country was well contained for much longer than expected. The underreporting of the matter has been consistent in the media. While facts are readily provided H1N1 reports take a secondary placing to other news. This inadvertently removes the significance of the crisis if it is maintained in such a manner in the media. There have already been 9 deaths as of August 9, higher than that of a number of Asian countries. The more recent cases have also involved patients who had no serious medical conditions. With drug resistant mutations already being reported there is a definite possibility of the situation worsening with successful vaccines still months away from mass production. While the current status is at Yellow, the latest stats from the Ministry of Health show that more than 50% of people reporting ill with Influenza type symptoms are being detected as having H1N1. Additionally the number of Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI) cases had also increased to far above epidemic levels in July and had only recently subsided. The underreporting is almost certainly to prevent a state of mass panic and while this is reasonable, therein lies the possibility of lulling the public into a false sense of security, which could have devastating consequences as well. On a lighter note, of less noteworthy but of interest nevertheless, and probably overlooked by the viewers, was PM Lee’s delivery of the message, which was oddly more dynamic than those of previous years. Obviously keeping in line with the changes from a charisma influenced, post-Obama political world, PM Lee engaged in visual cues, which at times seemed forced and even awkward. It is expectantly so, as it is in stark contrast with his National Day Messages of previous years which were delivered in a much more solemn tone and with little body movement, keeping with his usual demeanour. The event had been filmed in a similar location in 2007 and at the Istana last year. Perhaps the need to enforce optimism for the trying times of present was a factor as well given that a very large portion of the message unlike previous years was of the difficulties facing the nation at present and in the immediate future.  Read More →