Friday, July 30, 2010

Act of God

Hi Mr Tan
MM Lee attributed the recent floods in Singapore to "an act of God" and said that no amount of engineering can prevent flooding....

While Chairman Mao pledged that the Chinese would be able to bend nature to their will, our MM thinks that no amount of engineering can prevent flooding in Singapore as they are "acts of God"....


Lu Xun, one of the great thinkers of the democratic May 4th Movement in the first decades of the 20th century, made a famous attack on the then ruling elite for issuing telegrams that blamed God for the woes befalling China. Lu quipped, "God replied in dismay: 'But I wasn't even there!'”

Read http://de-leviathan.blogspot.com/

C H Yak 

1 comment:

Steve Wu said...

"How can you say that the response is sufficient? At the same time, whatever we do when we get extraordinary rains like we had recently, no amount of engineering can prevent flooding"

"Somethings are beyond (that); it's an act of God unless you want to lose half the roads and have canals."

----- Lee Kuan Yew, 21 July 2010

I have learned very early on that words like "all", "every", "any", "no" and such are all dangerous words because they require exceptional demonstration, a proof no less.

However, in the present case, the rains were neither extraordinary nor the floods unpreventable. Clearly Lee Kuan Yew did not know what he was talking about in this instance. There is no dichotomy here; Singapore does not need to choose between water management and economic efficiency. Land used for water drainage may always be put to multiple uses.

It started as a lie and the government is still trying to cover up. Why? The problem is obvious and the solution is equally so. Just do it!

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