I did not participate in Earth Hour. Well I couldn’t because I was still on the way home at 8.30pm tonight. But I did see quite a few buildings like SMU switching off their lights at 8.30 sharp.

Even if I was at home, I would not have turned off my lights. To all the treehuggers out there, I’m sorry but I think this Earth Hour is quite a load of rubbish. The amount of time, resources and energy it took to come out with all the marketing material would surely exceed any savings from the few people turning off their lights for that one hour. It’s ironic that the bus stop ads for Earth Hour remained lighted up throughout those magical 60 minutes.

Its symbolic, yes everyone agrees on that. But beyond the symbolism, I feel that it makes participants feel they are doing something great for the environment for just that one hour, before returning to their normal, wasteful ways.

I have a few practical and achievable suggestions for people who really want to save the Earth:

1. Sell your car, or don’t get one. Take public transport.

2. Only very occasionally sleep with aircon. Train your kids to sleep without aircon.

3. Limit your TV time to max 1 hr a day.

4. Change all the lightbulbs in your home to energy saving ones.

5. Seldom print anything, and if you do, print double-sided, two pages per side or use recycled paper.

How many Earth Hour participants do all of the above? I do. I’d like to challenge all Earth Hour participants to do the same. I’m sure there are many more ways that we can reduce consumption without too much inconvenience to ourselves.

In fact, one particularly wasteful and environmentally unfriendly policy of the Government which flies in the face of Earth Hour is the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s (URA) Lighting Masterplan. Introduced in 2006, the Lighting Masterplan asks building owners to turn on the lights in their buildings at night to beautify the city, as well as design lighting on their roofs to make their buildings more attractive. Choong Yong has written more about this and I shall not repeat what he said. Needless to say I agree with his points. Personally I would find a darkened city that allows me to see the natural lights of the stars much more beautiful.

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Technorati Tags: environmentalism, lighting, URA

The United Nations Human Rights Commission recently released a report on Israel’s war in Gaza. The report severely criticizes Israel for documented and verified reports of violations “too numerous to list.”

According to CNN, the report gave an account of how in a town southwest of Gaza City, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers ordered an 11-year-old boy to open Palestinians’ packages, presumably so that the soldiers would not be hurt if they turned out to contain explosives.

They then forced the boy to walk in front of them in the town, it said. When the soldiers came under fire, “the boy remained in front of the group”.

The report cited two alleged incidents from January 3. In one, it said, after a tank round struck near a house, a father and his two sons — both younger than 11 — emerged to look at the damage.

“As they exited their home, IDF soldiers shot and killed them (at the entrance to their house), with the daughter witnessing,” the report said.

In the second, it said, “Israeli soldiers entered a family house in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City. Standing at the doorstep, they asked the male head of the household to come out and shot him dead, without warning, while he was holding his ID, hands raised up in the air, and then started to fire indiscriminately and without warning into the room where the rest of the family was huddled together.

“The eldest son was shouting in vain the word ‘Children’ in Hebrew to warn the soldiers. The shooting did not stop until everyone was lying on the floor. The mother and four of the brothers, aged 2-12 years, had been wounded, one of them, aged 4, fatally.”

In a separate report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, a group of Israeli soldiers said that Palestinian civilians were killed and Palestinian property intentionally destroyed during Israel’s recent 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip.

In one account, a squad leader from a brigade serving in Gaza described an incident in which he said an elderly Palestinian woman was shot and killed at the orders of a company commander:

“One of our officers, a company commander, saw someone coming on some road — a woman, an old woman. She was walking along pretty far away, but close enough so you could take out someone you saw there. If she were suspicious, not suspicious — I don’t know. In the end, he sent people up to the roof, to take her out with their weapons. From the description of this story, I simply felt it was murder in cold blood.”

According to the Haaretz transcript, the squad leader protested the rules of engagement, which he said allowed soldiers to fire on Palestinian homes without giving residents a warning. After the rules were changed, his soldiers complained that “we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist.”

According to Haaretz, the squad leader went on to say that, “You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won’t say anything. To write ‘death to the Arabs’ on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It’s what I’ll remember the most.”

All these war crimes remind me of the evils perpetrated by another occupying force – the Japanese Imperial Army during World War Two, and what they did to the Chinese and other Asians in China, Korea and Southeast Asia.

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Technorati Tags: Gaza, human rights, Israel, Palestinians, war crimes

I’ve followed the Straits Times’ last two Saturday Insight articles — last week’s was about the Opposition’s plans for the coming election; this week’s was a report card on the 24 PAP MPs who were brought in for the 2006 election.

Overall I feel that both articles were relatively balanced. In a rare departure from the ST’s usual reporting style, the two articles extensively quoted sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Given the political climate in Singapore, where fear of retribution runs high, I am not surprised that these anonymous sources provided some of the more juicy tidbits about political players on both sides.

Of the interviewees who were willing have their names quoted, I think SMU law lecturer Eugene Tan appears to have the best grasp of the issues:

On the P65 MPs:

They and others urge the younger MPs to go beyond ‘the mere stylistics and cosmetic branding’, as law academic Eugene Tan puts it.

‘They need to connect at the cognitive and personal level and I don’t think we have seen enough of that – well, not yet,’ he says. For instance, politically, the younger MPs have imbibed the party attitudes such that they are almost indistinguishable from the pre-65 MPs.

‘In Parliament, they have not distinguished themselves at articulating the younger generation’s perspectives, concerns and thoughts on national matters.’

On the WP:

Like it or not, the hammer is the most recognisable symbol after the lightning. How well they do will depend on whether they are able to bring new candidates and raise the calibre of candidates.

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Technorati Tags: elections, MPs, Opposition, PAP, recruitment

For readers who surf on the move, I’m pleased to announce that my blog is now accessible from your mobile devices. Just go to http://geraldgiam.sg and you’ll be presented with a mobile-friendly page.

Credits to Wordpress PDA & iPhone for creating this handy Wordpress plugin. Any feedback on this is most welcome, particularly if you’re using an iPhone or Blackberry (since I’ve only tried it using my old Nokia phone and PDA).

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It’s not often that you see such a strongly worded letter coming from the US government (or a State government). I think this letter from the New York Attorney General to the AIG Chairman takes the cake.

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Technorati Tags: bailout, recession, US

An article appeared on Saturday (March 7) in Malaysian newspaper The Star titled “Engaging the young and restless on their virtual turf”. The writer, veteran Singapore journalist Seah Chiang Nee, mentioned me briefly:

Prominent blogger Gerald Giam believes that until now the PAP did not see a need to use the Internet because it had firm control of newspapers and television.

He probably paraphrased it from a blogpost I wrote:

…back then, I think the PAP did not plan to use new media in a big way to win over the electorate. It didn’t see a need to since it had effective control over the mainstream media (it still does) and few Singaporeans were getting their news from the Internet (that number has grown, and it includes not just young people, but retirees as well).

Mr Seah also wrote that:

In his interview, PM Lee apparently realised it. Moving forward, he said, what is needed are young MPs who are comfortable with the new media landscape.

I’m interested to know who these young, potential MPs are — and if they even exist. Scanning local blogosphere for the past two years, I don’t know of many fellow bloggers who are pro-establishment and have made a name for themselves (i.e., Netizens know about them, for better or worse). Only a few come to mind: Ephraim Loy, Nicholas Lazarus, Kway Teow Man.

The fact that more than two years after PAP MP Denise Phua said the Internet is “85% against the government”, our blogosphere is still as anti-establishment as before indicates that there really aren’t many prominent bloggers in the PAP ranks to balance the anti-PAP rhetoric.

Added to the stringent qualifications for being a PAP candidate (scholar, CEO or can speak Chinese/Malay very well), this means that the party probably has to settle for candidates who are IT savvy, but are not necessarily bloggers.

This does not spell well for their e-engagement strategy. Being IT savvy doesn’t mean that one knows how to engage Netizens. Those are two completely different skillsets. It’s like asking a programmer geek to be a public relations professional.

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Technorati Tags: blogging, elections, new media, PAP, recruitment

The Sage of Singapore has spoken:

He (MM Lee) said there would be ‘no purpose’ in holding an election in Singapore before 2011, but the timing of a poll will depend on the health of the global economy.

Actually I agree with him.

Amidst all the speculation in the media and blogosphere that elections are coming, I can’t fathom why the PAP government would want to call early elections.

I think public opinion and confidence in the government is currently at an all time low. While “low” is not low compared to countries like Japan, where the prime minister’s approval ratings are in the teens, it is still too low to win as convincingly as the last time round.

Let’s face it: Whether elections are held tomorrow, next year or in January 2012, the PAP is going to win an outright majority. The question is by how much and whether they will lose any more seats in the next election.

But common wisdom states that the best time (for the PAP) to hold an election is at the start of a recession, or towards the tail end of one. MM Lee, and even his son the PM, has said that 2009 could see an 8% contraction in the economy. This would be an appalling performance, and more so if our economy contracts more than our neighbours and competitors.

The 2009 Budget contains billions of benefits for companies, but just peanuts for Singaporeans. That’s not a recipe for electoral success, since companies don’t vote.

Of course the PAP is free to act on its hubris and call for elections nonetheless. We’ll see what dent the opposition can make on the ballot box.

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Technorati Tags: budget, elections

I glanced through the US Department of State’s annual human rights report on Singapore. It contains little that I don’t already know. Much of it was a cut-and-paste from last year’s report.

Yet there were a few interesting tidbits that I noticed.

In June a visiting foreign citizen, Gopalan Nair, was arrested for comments he made in his blog about the High Court judge presiding in the hearing to assess damages in the Chee defamation case. He was charged with insulting a public servant, which carried a maximum fine of S$5,000 ($3,759) or one year in prison.

Gopalan Nair is a US citizen, albeit a former Singaporean. I found it interesting that the US State Dept (i.e., its foreign ministry), which is supposed to defend the interests of its citizens abroad, chose to avoid stating that Nair was a US citizen. I can think of two possible reasons. One, most Americans won’t even suspect or care that he is a US citizen; and two, they probably don’t want to cause an uproar back home over him, and jeopardize bilateral relations. Although that latter statement is probably me getting too big headed. Why would a hyperpower like the US care about offending Singapore in this respect?

The Films Act bans political advertising using films or videos as well as films directed towards any political purpose. The act does not apply to any film sponsored by the government, and the act allows the MICA minister to exempt any film from the act.

Another interesting omission was that they failed to mention anything about the AIMS committee, the government’s response to their report and the proposed “liberalisations” of the Internet and the Films Act. Either they thought that these were too insignificant to be worthy of mention, or it happened too late to make it to press time. I know that the US embassy here has taken some interest in these developments, so I’m surprised they didn’t report about it. Or maybe it’s because technically, the Films Act has yet to be amended — I believe it is still pending its second reading in Parliament.

The report also did not mention about the spike in incidences of cheating of foreign workers from Bangladesh, China and elsewhere. This must come as a huge relief to MOM, whose officers had probably already prepared a rebuttal and cleared it with their Minister for release.

The belief that the government might directly or indirectly harm the employment prospects of opposition supporters inhibited opposition political activity; however, there were no confirmed cases of such retaliation.

I’m glad to hear there were no confirmed cases — in 2008. I hope that continues on for 2009 and beyond, especially during an election year. In my opinion, this is the single biggest reason why the opposition continues to face such difficulties in recruiting more capable Singaporeans into their ranks.

Yet,

Law enforcement agencies, including the Internal Security Department and the Corrupt Practices Investigation Board, have extensive networks for gathering information and conducting surveillance and highly sophisticated capabilities to monitor telephone and other private conversations. No court warrants are required for such operations. It was believed that the authorities routinely monitored telephone conversations and the use of the Internet. It was widely believed that the authorities routinely conducted surveillance of some opposition politicians and other government critics.

I wonder who these opposition politicians they are monitoring are? “Politicians” could mean elected MPs, or simply opposition party members. I consider it a gross invasion of privacy if they are wiretapping the telephone conversations and emails of law-abiding opposition members. It will be even more appalling and unacceptable if they are monitoring elected opposition MPs. That would be a huge misuse of government and taxpayer resources for political ends.

Imagine if Internal Security Department (ISD) officers — who are civil servants — are monitoring opposition party conversations and emails, and are reporting all their election strategies to the Prime Minister! I sure hope this is not happening, because I think the ISD and the PAP will lose every remaining shred of credibility if they do revolting things like that. If they don’t, then the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) should come out and strongly rebut this accusation by the US and state clearly that nothing of this sort happens in Singapore.

I have written separately to MHA to highlight this to them and request for their action.

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Technorati Tags: foreign affairs, human rights, Opposition, US, wiretapping