Singapore activist found guilty of hosting ‘illegal assembly’ via Skype

Post by tempest473 » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

angelsl wrote: post #145

mempko wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Some laws are stupid and must be broken.

If you don't like a law, change it, don't break it and get yourself in trouble. This is basically the difference between East Asian cultures and Western/American culture. We value a balance of order and individual rights, you guys value individual rights over all.

Post by xster » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 8:18 PM UTC

anvandare wrote: post #33

nindalf wrote: post #15

I see people in this thread surprised that this is happening in Singapore, a “modern” country. Singapore is certainly wealthy, the population is highly educated, institutions aren’t corrupt, all of which is great. However, the political system resembles a democracy only superficially. Every election since 1965 has been won by the same party. It is inconceivable that the People’s Action Party wouldn’t win an election…

>that one Dictator in a million Also called an enlightened despot; In the Eastern -Chinese Legalism tradition- a 明君 "míngjūn". There have been instances of them throughout history. But like you said, the problem is usually what happens once the ruler is gone. It's never a (long-term) good idea to have the success of a group dependant on a single person. A political system that produces mediocre-but-stable success (ov…

Post by hkt » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #115

hkt wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK we do policing by consent. We aren't interested in attacking our own people. Some other countries could learn by our example. The reason he "selfishly" sold them, by the way, was because they were in poor condition, cost more to keep than to sell, and were actually illegal to use . It is clear to me where you get your news from, based on what you say. It is not encouraging.

> We aren't interested in attacking our own people. There's a lot of backslapping going on here that isn't really warranted; the Met are very far from perfect when we're talking about public order policing. And that's before we get onto the subject of how policing was done in living memory in Northern Ireland.

Post by tomjen3 » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

angelsl wrote: post #145

mempko wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Some laws are stupid and must be broken.

If you don't like a law, change it, don't break it and get yourself in trouble. This is basically the difference between East Asian cultures and Western/American culture. We value a balance of order and individual rights, you guys value individual rights over all.

Post by tomjen3 » Fri, Jan 04, 2019, 9:16 PM UTC

ahje wrote: post #4

ekianjo wrote: post #2

Im not sure I understand the story. He was judged for illegal assembly regardless of the Skype call, as far as I understand. Anyone else can comment?

"“The law says that any event which is open to the public, and is ’cause related’, requires a permit when a foreigner speaks." There was a foreign speaker participating over Skype. As idiotic as the law seems to be, I do believe the case is rather clear. The foreigner did indeed speak at the conference, which was public. The fact that Skype was used as a medium to facilitate that doesn't really change anything.