::Homework Crapbox:: (2017)
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[Video] - Singaporean man, 44, in hospital in Malaysia after being beaten by 3 men with baseball bats
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Migrant worker in S’pore has painful life story. But it’s the rare one that gets told.
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Kong Hee humbled he gets police escort on his way to church in Indonesia
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Thai tearjerker ad: You won’t want this woman’s life, but will wish to be like her
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The Mynmar Rohingya crisis is not straightforward black and white, it's not a simplistic "Buddhists versus Muslims", it's actually a multi-sided issue with multiple ethnic groups all feeling victimized by poverty and politics. The poverty striken Rhakines (a mixture of Muslims and Buddhists) as well as the Rohingyas, both feel unfairly treated by the Burmese majority and by international aid targeting only the Rohingya.
http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/good-reason-to-tread-carefully-on-rohingya-crisis
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Singaporean girl is shocked : "It was like putting on my glasses for the first time. I never really understood my vision was blurry until I saw clearly for the first time!"
https://www.allsingaporestuff.com/article/nus-student-explicit-rant-about-chinese-sporean-penis-size
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International politics is about knowing what the other guy wants, and giving him some satisfaction.
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[World] - USA preparing to confront China with military force in the South China Sea
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-usa-idUSKBN1430CJ
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[Mexico] - Female politician and her female friend, beaten up by 4 men, who repeatedly kicked her in her face. An average of six women are killed every day in Mexico.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/former-olympic-medalist-beaten-mexico-200832849--spt.html
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Is it Alzheimer's that exacerbates feelings of loneliness, or feelings of loneliness that exacerbates Alzheimer's? Both may operate simultaneously, resulting in a vicious cycle.
https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/surprising-between-loneliness-alzheimers-203721981.html
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1stly, she's seriously stupid & idiotic to think she can get away with obviously traceable theft like this. 2ndly, she's pathetically shallow & materialistic to waste the Sg $3 million++ on "designer luxury handbags, clothes, shoes and jewellery from Chanel, Christian Dior and Cartier". An insult & disgrace to chemical engineers worldwide.
http://www.straitstimes.com/world/student-pleads-not-guilty-over-49m-bank-transfer
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Over the decades, both Russia and Japan have at times floated the idea of joint economic activity on the disputed islands, but how to do that without undercutting either side's claim to sovereignty has never been resolved.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-russia-idUSKBN143332
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Mysteries of the Moon
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Woman Finds Out Fiancé Is Her Half-Brother... if you were either of them, how would you choose to proceed? Morality is an illusion. There is only Ethics and CosmoEthics.
https://sg.style.yahoo.com/woman-finds-fianc-her-half-174215487.html
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Ang Mohs are showing off a never before (and will still never ever be seen) side of Singapore online.
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What if she says No? :Þ *guailan*
Mr Rajesh Singh is planning to formally propose to his wife. And it is going to be the ride of his life as the "surprise proposal" will take place in a cable car cabin on New Year's Eve. But here is the twist: Mr Singh, a Singaporean, and his wife, Ms Mia Wang, 25, from mainland China, have been married for slightly over a year, an arranged marriage decided by their parents. He wanted to set things right with his wife who never got to be courted and romanced in real life. Hence, the upcoming proposal.
http://www.tnp.sg/news/singapore/already-married-now-decent-proposal
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An American man says he learned a court in the UK had determined that he was guilty of sexually harassing a woman at a company conference, and his photo was splashed across a UK tabloid.
Fanelli, who lives in Atlanta, said he felt doubly betrayed: First because his employer, BMC Software, never told him that a woman made allegations against him as part of a broad discrimination complaint she filed in a British employment tribunal; and second, because the company refused to help clear his name once the salacious allegations became public.
"I have a legal history now of something that I never did, that I'm innocent of," Fanelli told The Assoicated Press. "And they (the company) did nothing to help defend me, so here we are."
The British woman, who worked for a BMC subsidiary, said in a written statement to the tribunal that during a company conference in Nashville in April 2008, Fanelli was drunk and put his hand up her skirt and grabbed her backside.
She also said her boss discouraged her from reporting the incident, which she described as an example of a pattern of discrimination. About six months after the conference, she filed an internal grievance with the British subsidiary, alleging that she'd been denied accounts and territories because she's a woman. Her complaint mentioned the alleged sexual harassment by Fanelli.
https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/atlanta-man-labeled-groper-tabloid-231040079.html
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[Mexico] - Kidnap one of ours, and we'll kidnap one of yours. Villages fed up with kidnappings decide to kidnap gang leader's elderly mother, in exchange for a kidnapped villager.
http://www.tnp.sg/news/world/kidnap-our-friend-well-grab-your-mum
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[China] - Parents of 9 year old girl, 2 year old girl and 2 year old boy, abandon the 3 young children in public. When the police contact their many aunties and uncles to accept the 3 young children, all of them refuse to do so (citing the burden of financial responsibilities).
The children were then taken to the home of their paternal grandfather. But the old man didn't open the door, pretending not to be at home. When police officers peered through the window, they saw him lying awake on his bed.
The 3 young children called out to him repeatedly from outside his door, but he refused to open it.
The local children's welfare institute at first said they could not accept the children since they still had traceable direct relatives. But they were finally allowed to stay temporarily, until the police decide what to do with the 3 young children.
http://www.tnp.sg/news/world/mother-disappears-leaving-kids-restaurant
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China seizes US naval probe in South China Sea
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The post highlights the observation that as of right now (and indeed for the foreseeable future), both USA-Trump and China-XiJinPing doesn't like Singapore-LHL very much.
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Singaporean woman writes in, "The situation in Aleppo, Syria, has reached the point whereby I no longer can sit, watch, and wait for something to happen.". What exactly does she think she can do to save the war-torn citizens of Aleppo, that even the most powerful men on Earth (ie. all the presidents of the superpowers) cannot?
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Source : https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/12/15/aleppo-is-about-the-sanctity-and-dignity-of-each-and-every-human-life/
The tragedy - no, the genocide - in Aleppo is unfolding before our eyes. Less than a generation after the Srebrenica massacre and Rwanda, after "never again". Here we are again. And yet there is also something different about this genocide. I don't recall another that had so many ardent supporters on the two sides.
A Turkish friend wrote on my Facebook wall: "May Allah destroy all who help this massacre happen - Iran." I reminded him that the destruction of a whole country is tantamount to genocide, but there was no retraction.
An Arab friend, a leading scholar of Islamic law, has gone on repeated anti-Shi'ite, anti-Iranian and anti-Family of the Prophet (Ahl al-Bayt) rants on his Facebook wall. Again, no retractions. Some Iranian Shi'ites have not fared any better, resorting to anti-Sunni, anti-Arab rants. No retractions.
As a Muslim, I am particularly agonised by this. We are a people who have been raised to speak out for justice, even if our voices shake. We are a people who are to speak the truth and stand up for justice even if it is against ourselves, against our parents and against our community. What a lofty and beautiful moral stance, and how short we have fallen of that moral high ground.
I see most of us supporting the "side" that lines up with our sectarian affiliation and geopolitical interests. The Muslims who view the crisis of Aleppo as primarily a Russian/ Iranian/Bashar al-Assad genocide of a defenceless population have been sharing the "final messages" of people of Aleppo.
On the other side, Muslims who have celebrated President Assad's victories as "liberating" Aleppo from Islamic militant groups (Nusra/Jaysh/FSA) have resorted to quoting freelance journalist Eva Bartlett, who is featured on Russian-backed sites RT.com and Sputnik. They have taken to questioning the "final messages" from Ale ppo.
Something about all of this seems rotten. We are determining our moral stance on a genocide based on our geopolitical commitments. Somewhere we were told that every human life is sacred, that every life has the breath of God inside. Somewhere we were told that to take one human life is as if to take the life of the whole of humanity, and to save one human life is as if to save the whole of humanity. Somewhere we were told that the life of a human is more sacred than the Kaaba itself.
Syrians in a rebel-held area of Aleppo being evacuated to a rebel-held territory in the west of Aleppo province yesterday. If we cry out against the victims for one side, and have not a mumbling word to say about the other victims, our partial mourning is rooted in a flawed sectarianism, says the writer.
And all along, hundreds of thousands of Syrians die.
If your stance on Syria is shaped by whether the killing is being done by Russia/Iran/Assad's genocidal government, or by Nusra/Jaysh/FSA genocidal forces, you still haven't got the part about the sanctity and dignity of each human life.
If we cry out against the victims for one side, and have not a mumbling word to say about the other victims, our partial mourning is rooted in a flawed sectarianism. It's not the identity of the killers that makes it a crime. It's the humanity of the victims, the dignity that each of us is afforded by the virtue of having the breath of God inside us.
Let us never succumb to lining up our moral commitments with geopolitics of a nation-state. It's the geopolitical politics that have to line up with dignity of human lives, not the other way around.
May it be that we stand up not for Iran, not for Turkey, not for Saudi Arabia, not for Russia, not for the US, but only for justice. This is not about Sunni and Shi'ite, Arab and Iranian. It's about right and wrong. It's about human dignity.
As a Muslim, I find my community in selective outrage. The same desire for moral consistency applies to us as Americans. I watched with admiration the powerful words of Ambassador Samantha Powers speaking at the United Nations, addressing Russia and Iran: "Are you truly incapable of shame?... Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child, that gets under your skin, that just creeps you out, just a little bit?" Yes, these are powerful words. I found myself nodding in agreement. Yet I wonder where the same moral outrage was in our own country's use of drones against Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iraq and Syria. Where was the same outrage when we bombed wedding parties and blew grandmothers to smithereens? Where was this moral display in Abu Ghraib and the forced feeding of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?
Where is the moral speaking to power when we destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan, enable the Israeli occupation of Palestine by providing both military and political cover for Israel, and expedited shipment of weapons to Saudi Arabia to wreak havoc on Yemen?
As an American, I find the US in selective outrage. We are shocked that the Russians would interfere in US elections, when Americans have a long history of regime change in Iran (1953), Chile (1973) and elsewhere. We are aghast that the Russians would bomb defenceless populations, when we have bombed civilian populations for so long in so many places that it is not an aberration: it is tradition.
As the home to both Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, the US has always been both a dream and a nightmare, particularly towards poor and marginalised people inside US borders and in the global South. I want us as Muslims to be a moral people. I want us as Americans to live up to the meaning of our creeds.
No, I don't know how to stop the bloodshed in Syria. Yes, we feel helpless, angered, sad, devastated.
Let us do whatever we can to alleviate the suffering of Syrians. And let us become a moral people who put human dignity above geopolitical and sectarian interests.
WASHINGTON POST
•The writer is director of the Duke Islamic Studies Centre.
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"I understand that we have been stricken out of the Millennium Challenge. Well, good, I welcome it," Duterte said with apparent sarcasm.
"We can survive without American money," he said.
"But you know, America, you might also be put to notice. Prepare to leave the Philippines, prepare for the eventual repeal or the abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement," he said, referring to a 1998 accord that governs American forces visiting the Philippines for joint combat exercises.
"You know, tit for tat ... if you can do this, so (can) we. It ain't a one-way traffic," Duterte said, adding tauntingly, "Bye-bye America."
While calling Americans "sons of bitches" and "hypocrites," Duterte praised China as having "the kindest soul of all" for offering what he said was significant financial assistance. "So, what do I need America for?" he asked.
He also said Russia can be a very important ally. "They do not insult people, they do not interfere," he said.
Read the visitor comments below the article.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/philippines-duterte-us-over-aid-issue-bye-bye-083928376.html
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Man commits suicide after final post on Facebook.
"I don't know what to do anymore. My girlfriend of over 2 years (yes you may think it's a short period) has decided we aren't good for each other anymore - 2 years is a long time to bond, to be happy with.
Now we are separating I don't feel like I can live without her full love any longer. She was and still is my everything. I don't think I will be able to get over this. I don't want to wait till I get over the situation because she's the only one that's ever made me truly happy."
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/man-20-shares-tragic-final-234640241.html