In the name of security, we do many unnecessary things and cause a lot of hassle to the ordinary people. This makes life stressful.
Look at the excessive security in the airport. I do not mind the necessary security, but the excessive security does not make sense. I shall talk about some of these excessive measures.
Look at the need to register your particulars before you enter a building. It is a regular affair. Why do they need to spend the time to record people entering into a building? How many records are being kept? Are they of any use? In fact, I am worried that the records could be abused - as it is intrusion on privacy. Is privacy and the rights of the individuals important in Singapore also?
With all the excessive security in some places, why is SMRT not paying sufficient attention to prevent outsiders from entering into their depots? Surely, this is more important than checking all the visitors to a building?
We need to speak up on measures that intrude into our lives, and do not serve a useful purpose.
Look at the excessive security in the airport. I do not mind the necessary security, but the excessive security does not make sense. I shall talk about some of these excessive measures.
Look at the need to register your particulars before you enter a building. It is a regular affair. Why do they need to spend the time to record people entering into a building? How many records are being kept? Are they of any use? In fact, I am worried that the records could be abused - as it is intrusion on privacy. Is privacy and the rights of the individuals important in Singapore also?
With all the excessive security in some places, why is SMRT not paying sufficient attention to prevent outsiders from entering into their depots? Surely, this is more important than checking all the visitors to a building?
We need to speak up on measures that intrude into our lives, and do not serve a useful purpose.
11 comments:
The mandate given by UN to NATO is to protect civilians of Libya. The best way to protect the civilians is to stop the civil war (which, according to a rebel leader, killed at least 30,000 people and wounded at least another 50,000) by imposing an immediate ceasefire and oversee the reform of Libya.
But NATO chose to do the opposite. NATO rejected the ceasefire proposed by the African Union, which were accepted by Libya government. NATO chose to let the civil war expanded and provided arms and military training to the rebels and conducted 26,233 sorties, of which 9,634 are attack sorties.
Attack sorties are missions flown to identified targets with the sole purpose of destroying them. Legitimate targets include, military hardware (tanks, air bases etc) communications, and command infrastructures, troop convoys, and as we have seen Gaddafi himself, his family and anyone else that happens to be near him (one of the attack killed 3 of the Gaddafi’s grandchildren age between 2 to 3).
Since June 2011, NATO became more desperate and started attacking non-combat buildings and basic infrastructures (for example, NATO airstrikes on the Tripoli headquarters of the state-owned national TV broadcaster Al-Jamahiriya and two of its installations on 30 July. Three journalists were killed and 21 others were wounded in the airstrikes). The attack at basic infrastructures has caused Tripoli residents having difficulties in getting water and electricity supplies.
If each attack sorties fired only 2 missiles and each missile is capable of destroying a building, we can envisage that how much damage the 19,268 (2 x 9,634) missiles have been done to Libya. The total population in Libya is only about 6.4 millions.
I dare to say that NATO is the main contributor to the dead and injury to the more than 80,000 Libyan (the figure could be much more as the rebel leader don’t have much information from Gaddafi controlled areas). So far, not much information about the casualties suffered by Gaddafi’s side, because almost every time after the attack, NATO and the western media will issues the standard clause “mission completed successfully and targets destroyed, any casualties arise from the attack could not be verified”. But if we based on the 2 “friendly fire” incidents which killed 13 civilians and 5 rebels’ fighters and wounded many more others.(“friendly fire’ is defined as NATO mistook the rebels as Gaddafi people. That is, NATO has the intention to kill those people!). The 9,634 attack sorties could have killed and wounded an estimate of more than 150,000 people. [(13+5) x 9,634 = 173,412]
Many of the innocent people like the Gaddafi’s 3 grand children (age between 2 to 3) and the 3 journalists from the TV’s headquarter, were killed not at the battle field or war zone, they were killed by the well planned NATO attack sorties at their residential area or work place.
Tripoli residents have difficulties in getting water and electricity supplies is also the results of NATO well planned attacks at the basic infrastructures of Libya. How many civilians get killed when NATO attacking these basic infrastructures? In fact Tripoli is not the city at war, why is it received the most attack from NATO?
The parties benefited from the expanded war are the NATO’s arms manufacturing companies and the defense related industrials. NATO’s construction industrials will have many big contracts when participating in the reconstruction of Libya (Libya is rich and can afford to pay for the rebuilding). Also, NATO’s petrol companies will benefit from the oil rich Libya if the rebel has the control of the country.
Not just security. Effective 1 Sep 2011 there is a law called Workplace Safety and Health Act (WSH Act)that covers safety even in the office and those white collar jobs! That is all places of work! They require staff to do a risk assessment using a standard form (more paperwork)of their workplace!
And such companies are even required to be certified on this aspect when they want to tender for projects. More business for safety consultant and auditing firms.
You can also see the numerous advertisements on TV and MRT stations by the WSH Council (govt link body) publicising this.
Jokes - Changing Singapore (Light Bulbs)
This is dedicated to all the complex policies we have in Singapore.
Question:
How many complexity minded policy makers does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer:
Five. One policy maker to stand on a chair to hold the light bulb. Another four policy makers to rotate the chair in an anti-clockwise direction to unscrew the light bulb.
Certainly sounds like SMRT may have a security problem.
And if I remember the newspaper reports correctly, SMRT is planning to institute 100% visual inspection of all the trains before they leave the depot.
To stop trains with graffiti from leaving the depot and going into service.
Into full sight of the public.
No graffiti seen in public means security is working I guess.
A cheap, good and fast solution that LSS will be proud of.
Recently more security personnel armed with guns are patrolling MRT Stations more often.
It has a boomerang effect on us, quite unsettling, raising fears whether the terrorists are targeting Singapore installations again. The MRT stations are the weakest link, the female CEO of SMRT better pull up her socks, to pay more attention on security and less on the bottom profit margins of the company.
The staff that make you write your name down when you enter a building are never the same people that came up with the process.
The frontline staff know the process is useless, time wasting and therefore a joke.
But their bosses told them to make people write the info down. Why? Because the bosses' boss told them to, and so on and so on.
Eventually you will find that someone was tasked to come up with a way to 'improve security'. That person thinks the whole thing is a joke but she has to come up with something, anything.
So the easiest and fastest thing for everyone, and especially for the frontline people who left primary school, or more likely, foreigners with little English ability, to enforce is to fill in a page with names and identification numbers (how do you verify passport numbers for example? - people don't carry these with them) and phone numbers which cannot be checked anyway.
Voila. Something was done.
Never underestimate the power of the saying that to be seen doing something, no matter how dumb, is better than doing nothing.
btw: I have written my name wrong, my ic wrong, etc. into these books. I once wrote a Chinese name and the guard was satisfied, and I am Indian! ha ha ...
Becoz a bomb going off in Changi airport or high-class office building in Raffles Place or Suntec will scare the freaking daylights out of big-shot MNC CEOs, CFOs etc.
Big shots don't take MRT in S'pore, so of course no need to waste too much money securing MRT. Just use cheap labour NSF police to patrol some stations can liao. And pay them $400 per month for 24/7 shift duty. This is called proper resource utilisation for profit maximisation.
Registering our particulars is already bad enough. Even worse is that many buildings require to hand over IC in exchange for a pass. That to me is extreme.
Singapore i/c so difficult to duplicate meh?
Security guard can tell the difference between a real & fake i/c meh?
Suicide bomber so scared to handover his i/c before blowing himself up meh?
Before they started all these sorties, they must have done a lot of planning. They must have spent a lot of time gathering intelligence on identifying targets. So nato must have planned for a very long time ahead that they wanted to attack Libya. But the question is why.
In Beijing subway stations, all bags have to be screened.
Useful? I see the working personnel chatting away...
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