First of all, let me say I did not send the previous article to The Real Singapore (TRS). It is my considered opinion that they would run afoul of the law sooner or later. I simply did not like the way TRS plagiarised articles, and stoked anger against the government and foreigners. It annoys me to no end that the post on TRS not only took a part of my previous post without my permission, it even looked as if I had sent my post to them!

Allow me some time to explain why I had mentioned that the Channel News Asia (CNA) article was deleted.

First of all, I found the link to the CNA article via a forum post. That was the only article from the MSM (main stream media) I could find with those exact words. The other links in the first page of the Google search results were all either pointing to alternative media sites, or to some forums. Since I am making a fuss out of what a minister has said, I decided it would be safer for me to point my readers to a MSM source. That is to avoid being accused of making things up or putting words in the minister’s mouth. As the original article was deleted, I decided it’s best to make it clear to the readers the link on my post was pointing to a cached copy. It’s the least I could responsibly do for the people who bothered to give their time reading my posts. Above which, as I object to any form of government regulation on free speech on the Internet, I simply do my part in being responsible.

As I also do not know whether Google would keep cached articles perpetually, and I am under the impression that the ranking of an article may change over time, I thus made a screen shot. That way, if someone chanced upon my post several years later and the link to cached copy is broken, they would at least have some idea without having to spend more effort looking up the source, if they even do so at all!

While I had noticed more than once that CNA had deleted articles on their website, I must point out in some cases the same content showed up in a new link or an updated and more detailed article. Unfortunately, I had not searched in detail on whether there was another article containing those very same comments. If anyone has found another article on any of the MSM containing those comments I would be happy to use that as reference instead, so that I can put this whole episode behind me.

Simply put, I DID NOT intend it as an accusation or allegation that the deletion of the article on CNA was politically motivated, nor am I making a statement about the ranking of Singapore’s media freedom. It is unfortunate that some have taken my post that way.

I hope I have made my intentions sufficiently clear. Thank you everyone for taking your time to read this.