Scum of the Earth Award

– that an Australian man has sparked a storm of protest after creating an online computer game based on the murderous shooting spree at Virginia Tech. Players control an image of Korean-born gunman Cho Seung-hui, who killed 32 people before turning a gun on himself, and screams can be heard on the soundtrack as shots are fired at the other characters. The creator of ‘V-Tech Rampage’, 21-year-old Ryan Lambourn, said he made the game ‘because it’s funny’. The unemployed Lambourn responded to outraged calls for him to remove the game from the Internet by demanding 1,000 US dollars for each of the two sites it is on and said that for another 1,000 dollars he would apologise. But he said later that was a joke to ‘make more people angry’ and he would not remove the game from his own website or seek to have it removed from amateur game sharing site Newgrounds.com. (It would be really funny too when Lambourn ends up on the receiving end of a bullet some time in the future. It is only justice that he is shot so badly the doctors can’t patch him up but he remains conscious while he languishes as his life slowly bleeds away.)

The Stupid Shitty-Porean Award

– that a 17-year-old student of Hwa Chong Institution, one of Singapore’s top junior colleges, allegedly punched a bus driver in the face during a quarrel. The 53-year-old SBS Transit driver tried to stop the student from leaving. The teen’s girlfriend, who is from another school, had been found to be using an invalid concession card. (The entire case will be clearer when we find out who’s the real owner of the concession card, and get to the bottom on how she came to obtain it. Maybe then we will understand their desperation in wanting to get off, other than the standard impression of this idiot being an absolute ‘zee hong’. [Explanation: ‘Zee hong’ in Hokkien literally translates as ‘crazy for c*nts’. It demands no further explanation.])

The World This Week

– that Paul Wolf**kwit resigned as president of the World Bank on 17-May-2007, ending a protracted battle over his stewardship prompted by his involvement in a high-paying promotion for his companion. (Another one of the shitheads bite the dust! All the architects of the illegal invasion of Iraq must be punished.)

– that Wolf**kwit however managed to extract a statement from the bank’s executive board which virtually exonerating him. The closest the bank board came to criticising him was to say that ‘a number of mistakes were made by a number of individuals in handling the matter under consideration and that the bank’s systems did not prove robust to the strain under which they were placed.’ (The World Worse Bank can whitewash it whatever way they want. But the world will knows it for what it really is: Nepotism.)

– that John Howard called on Australians to pray for drought-breaking rain amid fears water resources in the country’s main agricultural zone have been seriously overestimated. Howard had last month warned that without a significant downpour by June, irrigation to farmers along southeastern Australia’s Murray-Darling river system would be cut. Although the area has had some rain since that announcement, it remains firmly within the grip of drought, with dam levels at less than 6% of their capacity. (The obvious reason for this is that Australia failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocols. But of course, the Australians also need to ask if they are still doing the right thing by staying in Iraq.)

– that Britain’s likely next prime minister Gordon Brown admitted that ‘mistakes’ had been made in Iraq, and vowed a new emphasis over the violence there, as he launched his bid to succeed Tony Blair. Setting out his stall a day after Blair announced that he will stand down on June 27, Brown also promised a change of the way Britain decides how to go to war. Blair, who is preparing to quit after 10 years in power, has long refused to apologise for his decision to support Warmonger Bush in the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. (Admitting the mistakes is meaningless without concrete action. Apologise!)

– that the head of Russia’s strategic missile forces threatened an ‘adequate response’ to offset the threat if a planned U.S. anti-missile defence system is deployed in eastern Europe. Russia has ‘serious concern’ over the U.S. plan to base a limited anti-missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, he added. (Russia could always team up with China and deploy some ICBMs in North Korea.)

– that Condom-leezza Rice insisted there was no reason to speak of a new Cold War with Russia as she arrived in Moscow for talks aimed at halting a dramatic slide in relations. Parallels drawn by some Russian officials with the era of the East-West Cold War were misplaced, Rice said as she prepared for meetings, including with Vladimir Putin. (Russia is no longer the sick bear back in 1991.)

– that Syrian President Bashar Assad predicted that the U.S. vision for a ‘new Middle East’ would fail as the region’s conflicts continue to escalate. His comments come days ahead of a conference on reducing violence in Iraq that will bring together Iraq’s neighbors – including Syria and Iran – and representatives of the big five UN Security Council members, including the U.S. (Eh… what mission? The mission which allows the U.S. to get its hands on the Iraqi oil? Fail? How?)

– that Afghanistan’s Taliban militia said the death of top military commander Mullah Dadullah would not ‘slow down the jihad’ and announced the fighter would be succeeded by his brother. After initially rejecting the gover-min’s announcement that Dadullah was killed in battle in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban’s leadership council acknowledged that he was dead. The lea-duh of the movement, Mullah Mohammad Omar, appointed Dadullah’s younger brother, Mullah Bakht Mohammad, to take his place, a spokesman said. (Sooner or later, retribution always catch up with you. Let’s hope that while it won’t ‘slow down the jihad’, it will stop it dead in its tracks.)

– that China’s new foreign minister accused critics of Beijing’s links to Sudan of trying to politicise the 2008 Olympics and insisted the crisis in Darfur would not tarnish the Games. In his first public comments on Sudan since taking office last month, Yang Jiechi said boycott calls and other attempts to place pressure on China over the situation in Darfur would not succeed. (The Darfur Conflict is as much a political problem as an environmental one. China is only a convenient whipping boy for the failure of the West to use more effective means to deal with it.)

– that 2 SAF soldiers were killed in Taiwan after a Taiwanese fighter jet plunged into a storeroom in an army camp. The crash, which also claimed the lives of the F-5F Tiger jet’s two Taiwanese pilots, caused a fire in the storeroom and injured nine other Singaporean soldiers on the ground, including NSF. Two of the injured Singaporeans, who like the others were in Taiwan in support of the SAF’s unilateral training programme, were hospitalised for serious burns. A Taiwanese Defence Ministry spokesman said that the jet was diving in a mock attack on ground troops when it crashed into a storeroom in the camp, home to the Taiwanese 542nd Armour Brigade. (People like Chen Shui-bian deserved the dying more than these two NSF.)

– that Su Tseng-chang and his cabinet resigned en masse Wednesday, less than two weeks after Su lost the DPP’s primary for presidential election nomination. The resignation will allow Chen Shui-bian to reshuffle the cabinet to work under incoming premier Chang Chun-hsiung. (It would be quite apt if the headline was: Su Tseng-chang – Yet another one wasted.)

– that Taiwan renamed the memorial hall for late Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek amid tightened security as protesters demonstrated against what they said was an attempt to erase his legacy. The new plaque for the ‘National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall’ was unveiled by Chen Shui-bian, who said the move symbolised an end to the island’s authoritarian past. (Only to symbolise the inept and ineffectual rule of Chen and the DPP which lead Taiwan into the economic doldrums. Not to mention, the division of the people by devious political maneuvers. Furthermore, Chen has nothing to show for his 8-year term, other than whipping a dead man that could no longer stand up for himself.)

– that as the dry season begins in Indonesia, prospects increase that fires and haze will again return to plague the region later this year. This alarming prediction is the consensus among experts, NGOs and officials that emerged at a recent workshop in Jakarta. While the dry season is a natural factor, analysts agree that human action, corporations and gover-min policy in land clearing are factors that can be controlled. (They just want to use it to blackmail other countries into paying for those factors they can control.)

– that in a move that would not just allow oil tankers to bypass the heavy traffic and pirates of the Malacca Strait, but which could also impact Singapore’s oil refining and shipping industries, the Malaysian Cabinet has given its blessing to a $7-billion crude oil pipeline stretching across the country. The decision – which comes two years after Thailand abandoned a similar scheme because of costs and safety concerns – will provide a short-cut between Middle East producers and the East Asian market. The 312-km pipeline will stretch from the west coast town of Yan in Kedah – where crude oil from the Middle East will be off-loaded and a petroleum development zone has been designated – to the fishing port of Bachok in Kelantan to the east, where the oil will continue its journey by ship. (Just yet another of those external factors for the Tali-PAP to claim when they screwed up while still earning their millions.)

– that Malaysia’s 1.2 million civil servants serpents will be getting a pay rise because they deserve it, Badawi announced. (Even if they don’t deserve it who can say?)

– that how much they will get and when has not been decided – but the disparity in the salaries of high- and low-ranking gover-min employees will be taken into account in determining the formula for the pay hike, said Mr Abdullah. The high cost of living, he noted, had caused hardship to those in the lower-income group. The gover-min, Malaysia’s single biggest employer, has not raised salaries in 15 years, instead increasing allowances to counter rising costs. (Now where have we heard that before about ‘not having raised something for donkey years’?)

– that on the day Baby Lee was to meet Badawi, Mama-thir was admitted to hospital after experiencing breathing difficulties while on vacation in Langkawi – the third time he has been hospitalised since November when he suffered a heart attack. Doctors and family said that his condition is stable, and that he is currently ‘under observation’. (Move on, Mama-thir. You will not be missed!)

– that the ailing Mama-thir is recovering well after being admitted to hospital with breathing difficulties, his son and an aide said. Mama0thir, 81, was flown from a hospital on the resort island of Langkawi, where he was admitted to ICU, to Kuala Lumpur. (Seems like God decided that it’s not ‘time-out’ for him yet.)

Singapore This Week

– that more than one happy Singaporean so-called unionist had recounted similar stories of an unexpected windfall come bonus time when they met Baby Lee at last week’s May Day Rally. (And that’s how many percent of the workforce?)

– -that based on these so-called unionists’ windfall bonuses, Baby Lee claims to the media as he wrapped up his six-day official visit to the U.S., “So, when people say the economy is moving but a lot have been left behind, I think it’s not a full picture.” His view – expressed in response to a question on the mood of unionists on May Day – addresses some recently-voiced opinions that Singapore’s growth had been skewed towards the ‘haves’, causing the income gap to widen. (Anyone asked what position this so-called unionists are holding in their jobs? And when was the last time Baby Lee talked to a real worker and not one of those NTUC lackeys and sycophants?)

– that Singapore edged out perennial rival Hong Kong to emerge as the world’s second-most competitive economy after the U.S. But at a conference on transparency and governance, some speakers wondered whether the Republic would be able to sustain its competitive edge, given that political openness here has lagged behind the push for economic transparency. (With mini$terial pay being the highest in the world the best they could do was second?! Whoever remembers or cares about the second? No one cheers for Chel-ski when ManUre is EPL champion!)

– that the childcare subsidy for children of PRs will be withdrawn over the next two years. The subsidies will be cut by half from January next year, and will cease altogether by January 2009. Currently, children aged two months to under seven years of PRs receive grants of up to $150 a month if they are enrolled at a childcare centre. Infants whose mothers are working are entitled to up to $400, while children of non-working mothers are eligible for a subsidy of up to $75 per month, depending on whether the child attends a full-day, half-day or flexi-care programme. (So what happened to the ‘savings’ that is going to come from this measure?)

– that signalling that it is prepared to be tough on rumour-mongers who stir up public alarm, the CID Department is stepping in to track down the source of a hoax SMS message that has been making the rounds recently. The SMS claims that seven women died after sniffing poisoned perfume samples. It purports, falsely, to originate from Gleneagles Hospital, and that the gover-min was covering up the news to avoid panic. Parkway Hospitals, which runs the hospital, confirmed that the issue is now a police matter. (Verify. Verify. Verify. If you can’t verify the source and the truthfulness of a piece of news, you don’t pass it on.)

– that under the Telecommunications Act, anyone guilty of transmitting false messages can be fined up to $10,000 or jailed up to three years, or both. Penalties are harsher for messages referring to bombs or similar objects, and those guilty may be fined up to $50,000 or jailed up to seven years, or both. (Hoaxers should be made to appear on TV and apologise.)

– that despite a vast array of public aid schemes on the menu, critics have long scorned that help does not always reach its desired targets, as many needy Singaporeans continue to fall through the cracks. To patch up the social safety nets, the Northeast District has rolled out a new pilot programme to identify residents in need and to point them in the right direction. “The reality is that there are still pockets of residents who are still not forthcoming or unsure where to get help when they face financial and social problems,” said Teo Chee Hean, as he launched a Project Reach initiative. (Singapore got ‘aid schemes’? Really? Isn’t it always ‘If you f**ked up it’s because you are lazy!’ meh?)

– that 2 former directors of the NKF have been found guilty of negligence. Loo Say San and Richard Yong have been fined S$5,000 each, the maximum penalty for being inattentive with their director duties. (Just $5000 each when hundreds of thousands are paid to Durai?)

– that to reflect the ‘gravity of the matter’, District Judge Jasvender Kaur also barred Yong from taking on directorship of any firm for 4 years, while imposing a similar ban on Loo for 3 years. It was the first criminal conviction of the NKF’s former board members since the charity scandal, Singapore’s biggest, erupted in July 2005. The duo’s punishment should ‘serve as a timely reminder to all directors of the need to exercise the degree of care mandated by their position of responsibility’, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Chew Chin Yee. (They should be banned from taking on any directorships for life!)

– that the Tali-PAP Community Foundation, Singapore’s largest kindergarten chain, will absorb the extra 2% GST for all its services from July till the end of the year. It will also freeze all fees for 12 months. (It’s better you just not raise it at all and call whatever less you will take from me this year as giving me money.)

– that the Foundation estimates the latest move will cost it some $772,000. (Just about 1/4 of Baby Lee’s annual pay. Wow, that must have been really big deal that parents should be grateful of.)

Trivial, Jokes and Thoughts from Discussions

– that Jason Chiam wrote in his letter to VOICES on TODAY: “I find it incomprehensible that the SMRT considers buses to be merely complementary to train service. And too many bus services have been withdrawn due to the opening up of MRT stations along their routes. That should not be the case. Public transportation companies like SBS and SMRT must consider public buses as alternatives to trains, so that consumers have a choice. Let the consumers decide the mode of transport they wish to use to get to their destination.” (The superbly well paid civil serpents in the LTA and those ‘fumb ducks’ in the PTC thinks that even if you have to first take a bus before you can get to the MRT, that’s still ‘World Class’ system. It doesn’t matter if you used to be able to just take the bus to your work place right at the bus stop just below your block.)

– that Jason asked: “Why can’t the taxi companies simplify their fares? Compare the fare structure here to that adopted in Hong Kong, and the ease of getting a taxi in Hong Kong versus Singapore, and the conclusion is clear.” (Substitute the word Hong Kong for Taipei, Shanghai, Hangzhou, or even Johor Bahru and it would probably still be true.)

– that Jason also wrote: “It would be a shame if we have a wonderful road and train network infrastructure – for which I applaud the Ministry of Transport and the LTA – but the overall transport experience is let down by the taxi companies and bus operators who, in my opinion, seem to be only interested in the bottom-line.” (The bottomline has always been what that matters. Otherwise why do you get a elastic interval between trains when they used to have a plaque stating when the trains would come during peak hours and off-peak 20 years ago when it first started running?)

– that Orchard Towers and its infamous nightclubs could soon be a thing of the past, should it become the latest along Singapore’s premiere shopping belt to feed the en bloc frenzy. Early last month, the owners of the building – one of the oldest shopping centres on Orchard Road – elected a sale committee at its annual general meeting to study the possibility of a collective sale. The freehold property, which is well past its 30th year and made up of two 25-storey blocks, comprises a car park, offices and retail space, as well as several apartments. But it is the nightclubs and pubs – which have earned the notorious tag of ‘four floors of whores’ – that make the building come alive at night, attracting droves of expatriates. (The expats don’t need whores. There is no shortage in supply of SPGs in Singapore.)

– that more animals are being treated with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) at the Singapore Zoo. The practice has been going on for years but now research at the Zoo is getting a new injection of funding. Veterinarians at the Singapore Zoo have been using TCM to treat animals such as snakes, orang utans and even a miniature horse. (Not every medical condition need an injection of powerful drugs and steroids.)

– that in her first public comments since a prison sentence, Paris Hilton has described her 45-day jail term for a driving related offense as cruel and unwarranted. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Sauer rejected her defense that she didn’t realize her license was suspended and ordered her to report to a county detention facility on June 5. (It is well warranted and just not cruel enough. Should have been 90 days + life suspension from driving.)

– that Christopher Lee was jailed a month and fined $4,500 by a district court for drink driving and failing to help two injured men after his car had hit their motorcycle. The 35-year-old was convicted after pleading guilty to four of five charges, including drink driving and a hit-and-run rap. District judge Terence Chua also banned Lee, who is appealing against the jail term and out on $20,000 bail, from driving for three years. The motorcyclist and his pillion, both Indian nationals who earlier sued the actor, received about $60,000 in total from Lee in an out-of-court settlement. (This is something the Americans can learn in dealing with the likes of Paris Hilton.)