Saturday, June 21, 2008

John Hopkins and University of New South Wales - What Do You Think?

1. The Singaporean government is known for being generous in injecting millions of dollars into international research projects. It can also be cold and ruthless if these projects fail. Singapore ended their collaboration with a medical research arm of the Johns Hopkins University in Singapore, accusing it of not delivering ‘the goods’. This will send "shock waves” through other universities and research institutes and is the first important failure of Singapore's biomedical research projects.

2. The University of New South Wales (UNSW) shut down its campus in Singapore in June 2007. This is because of a financial shortfall of $15 million a year. The target was to ahve 300 students but there wre only 148 students. Some of those enrolled have already paid betwen between S$26,000 and S$29,000 a year. In the first place, it was the Singapore's Economidc Development Board which invited the UNSW in 2004 to start up the campus in Singapore. Do you think this is damaging to Singapore's aim of becoming a global hub for education?

What do you think? Email your views

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Civil Disobedience on the Blog

June 6, 2008
The man and his blog posts
By Zakir Hussain

GOPALAN Nair gave up his Singapore citizenship and became an American citizen in 2005. What he did not give up were attacks on Singapore laws and institutions in a blog titled Singapore Dissident.

In entries dating back to 2006, hardly a month goes by without a call for civil disobedience - breaking the law in the hope of changing it without resorting to violence.

'The system has to be forced to change... through telling the Government that their laws are morally repugnant and we will not obey them,' he wrote in December that year.

Praising Singapore Democratic Party chief Chee Soon Juan and his supporters for staging protests, Nair urged them to 'not let up' in their challenges to the authorities.

A month later, he called on Singaporeans to break laws he felt were unjust, like needing a permit to protest, as they would otherwise 'die as slaves'.

When Myanmar citizens here protested against their government's crackdown on protesters last year, he urged Singaporeans to take a leaf from them.

Last December, he called on Malays and Indians here 'to learn something' from protests by Indians in Malaysia against discrimination, and demonstrate outside Parliament against the Housing Board's ethnic integration policy he saw as 'discriminatory'.

Nair also called on the two elected opposition MPs - Mr Low Thia Khiang and Mr Chiam See Tong - to realise that simply bringing issues up in Parliament was fruitless. They should join Chee in civil disobedience to help the people, he wrote.

Neither men responded to his comments.

Another call he has made is one for parents to ask their children not to recite the national pledge in school, saying it was 'a shameless lie'.

In the same vein, last July he urged Singaporeans in the San Francisco Bay area not to attend National Day celebrations organised by the consulate there, arguing that this would give 'legitimacy to the Lee dictatorship in Singapore'.

He has also tried to disrupt several activities involving Singaporeans in California.

At a January 2005 event organised by the Bay Area chapter of Singapore Expats in America, a social group, he wanted to ask about Chee Soon Juan and human rights in Singapore.

According to a Singaporean who was there, Nair, when told this was not the appropriate forum to discuss the issue, then asked for a show of hands from the audience if they were keen to hear out the discussion. When he got no reply, he 'walked out in a huff'.

Last April, he posted a call for Singaporeans to boycott an upcoming meeting with then Minister of State for Education Lui Tuck Yew in San Francisco.

The boycott was to protest against a rise in ministerial and civil service pay, which he said 'amounts to embezzlement'.

Nair has not confined his criticism to ruling party politicians and the state. In a post last October, he called Hougang MP Low Thia Khiang 'a letdown to the cause of democracy'.

In another post that month, WP chairman Sylvia Lim was slammed as a 'shameless woman' for saying Singapore was capable of dealing with rule of law issues on its own and did not need outside interference.

zakirh@sph.com.sg

Politics and Religion - Use of Allah as synonym for God?

June 7, 2008
POLITICS AND RELIGION
For the love of God, stop grandstanding
By John Bradley

A RECENT effort in Malaysia to ban non-Muslims from using 'Allah' as a synonym for 'God', on the pretext that it could 'confuse' the country's Muslim majority, has dealt another blow to the country's reputation for pluralism.
The Herald, a Roman Catholic newspaper, last month cleared the first hurdle in its legal bid to contest the government's decision not to renew its licence unless its Malaysian-language edition ceased to use the word 'Allah'.

In the midst of the controversy, a senior official from Malaysia's Internal Security Ministry said: 'Christians cannot use the word Allah. It is only applicable to Muslims. Allah is only for the Muslim God.'

The statement is contentious on a number of levels. For a start, 'Allah' is an Arabic word used for centuries by Arab Christians as a synonym for 'God', even before Arabic-speaking Muslims existed.

The Malay translation of the bible, in which the word Allah appears, has been used by Christians since the church's earliest days.

More worrying is that the statement paradoxically echoes those of numerous anti-Muslim bigots in the West which portray Muslims as worshipping a God 'different' from that worshipped by Christians and Jews, reinforcing fears that Islam poses a threat to Judeo-Christian values and civilisation.

Remember Lieutenant-General William 'Jerry' Boykin? He was named US deputy undersecretary of defence for intelligence in 2003.

In 2005, while recounting a military battle he had fought against Muslims in Somalia, he declared: 'I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.'

When politics, culture and religion are entwined, ignorance usually triumphs. The political motivation for Lt-Gen Boykin's outburst was the US-led 'war on terror', especially as he was addressing a key Bush administration power base: evangelical Christians.

Similarly, Father Andrew Lawrence, editor of The Herald, told the BBC that 'politics and a general election' were the main reasons why the Malaysian authorities decided to raise the issue last year.

But there's also a cultural reason why a Malaysian official could so casually refer to a 'Muslim God': the emergence into the mainstream in Malaysia of Wahhabism, the extremist interpretation of Islam sponsored by the Saudi royal family.

Wahhabism was founded two centuries ago on a belief in the superiority of (Sunni) Muslims and the damning of Jews and Christians as 'infidels'. Historically alien to the diverse Muslim cultures of South- east Asia, Wahhabism spread like wildfire throughout the region in the wake of the 1970s oil boom.

The Saudi religious establishment spent tens of millions of dollars to fund mosques and universities, and offered lucrative scholarships for foreign Muslims willing to complete their religious education at Wahhabi-controlled institutions in Riyadh. It's no coincidence that the ban on Malaysian Christians using the world 'Allah' was first introduced in the early 1980s.

That politics and culture, rather than sound religious understanding, are really at the heart of the debate over the use of the word 'Allah' becomes obvious when Malaysia is compared with Egypt. It, too, has a sizeable Christian minority and a long tradition of Islamic pluralism.

Christians and Muslims in Egypt have lived peacefully together for centuries. But in the 1970s, millions of Egyptians began working in Saudi Arabia, and in many instances, when they returned, they propagated their newly learnt Wahhabi doctrine. At the same time, the Muslim Brotherhood was invited back from exile in the Saudi kingdom, and given a greater role in politics.

The result: Egypt's Christians suddenly found themselves under violent attack. Last week, three Christian workers were shot dead in a Cairo jewellery shop by assailants who stole nothing, while in Upper Egypt, three monks were kidnapped by Muslim extremists protesting against the renovation of a church. Egypt's Christian minority is voluntarily shunning Islamic-inspired terms and expressions.

Instead of greeting one another with asalam alaikum (peace be upon you), many now say ahlan (hi). Before starting a meal, instead of saying bismillah (in the name of Allah), they say bismasalib (in the name of the cross).

Where once they said without thought alhamdullillah (praise be to Allah), they now utter nushkrailrub (we thank our Lord).

In a recent Los Angeles Times article on God vs Allah, which was critical of the Malaysian government's stance, the Lebanese-American novelist Rabih Alameddine wrote: 'We never say the French pray to Dieu, or Mexicans...to Dios. Having Allah be different from God implies that Muslims pray to a special deity.

' It classifies Muslims as the Other. Separating Allah from God, we only see a vengeful, alarming deity, one responsible for those frightful fatwas and ghastly jihads - rarely the compassionate God.'

Creating more differences 'is troubling, even dangerous', he concluded. 'I suggest we either not use the word Allah or, better yet, use it in a non-Muslim context. Otherwise, the terrorists win.'

It's advice that the Malaysian authorities might benefit from.

j_r_bradley@hotmail.com

Rising petrol prices prompt switch to 'green' transport

June 8, 2008
Rising petrol prices prompt switch to 'green' transport
By Tan Dawn Wei

With pump prices heading north, motorists here are switching to cheaper alternatives.
Some have given up their cars and moved to public transport. Others have downgraded to smaller cars or two-wheelers. A growing number have opted for hybrid-engine cars.

There's even a six-month waiting time for those who are keen to kit their cars out to run on compressed natural gas (CNG) because of a sudden surge in demand, according to motor workshops.

There were 248 CNG cars on the roads last year, but this has more than doubled to 538 in April this year.

Hybrid cars, or those that switch between petrol and electricity, also shot up in the same period, going by the Land Transport Authority's numbers. Another 289 have joined their ranks, bringing the total to 1,346.

Another popular 'green' choice is public transport. Singapore's total bus and train ridership hit a record 4.78 million rides a day in the first three months of this year.

No cut in petrol duties to cushion fuel hikes
The Government is not about to reduce duty on petrol to help cushion rising pump prices.

The duty - 41 cents for every litre of standard grade petrol and 44 cents for the high-end stuff - is meant to promote public transport and curb excessive use of cars.
... more
The number of bids for certificates of entitlement (COEs) every month has also fallen since the beginning of this year, one more indicator that consumers are staying away from buying new cars.

COE bids for cars up to 1,600cc, for instance, fell from 3,005 bids in February to 2,500 this month.

'People are very cautious about buying big-ticket items now, with oil and food prices going up and property prices and shares moving down. They're adopting a wait-and-see approach,' said Tan Chong Motors' marketing director A.C. Neo.

If they do buy, says the Nissan distributor, small is in.

Borneo Motors, which sells Toyota cars, has also been selling more of its smaller capacity cars than its larger ones, said customer relations general manager Angeline Tan.

Another popular choice now is off-peak cars with the distinctive red plates. They can be driven from 7pm to 7am on weekdays, after 3pm on Saturdays and all day on Sundays and public holidays.

There are about 34,000 of them on the road now, compared to 2,644 just five years ago.

Mr Henry Ang, manager of car dealership Koh Brothers Automobile, said that he has seen a 20 per cent increase in the number of motorists who have switched from regular cars to off-peak cars to save money.

Petrol prices last went up two weeks ago, the 12th consecutive hike since last July. This brings pump prices here to between $2.153 and $2.386.

If you drive a 1,600cc car, that means you pay about $320 a month for petrol, going by the average distance covered. This is $70 more than the $250 you would have paid this time last year.

That bill is likely to go up as analysts expect petrol prices to hit $3 a litre here if oil prices reach US$200 (S$273) a barrel.

But energy consultant Ong Eng Tong of Mabanaft International said that he expects pump prices to end the year closer to $2.50 instead, which is about US$150 per barrel.

'Drivers will pay maybe $50 to $100 extra a month and this is discretionary income,' he said.

dawntan@sph.com.sg