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Singapores Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong offered a public apology last week for an embarrassing feud between him and his siblings over family matters,including the future of their late fathers home in central Singapore.

The spat is centered on the house at 38 Oxley Road, the residence of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapores founding father and the city-states former leader who had said in his will that he would like the property to be demolished after his death.

Premier Lee was accused by his two younger siblings of not honoring their fathers wishes and wanting to preserve the house.

The siblings accused the PM of misusing his power and trying to milk their fathers legacy for political gains.

However, Lee strongly denied all allegations and explained in a video that he was bequeathed the property by his father and he tried to transfer the house to his younger sister for a nominal price of S$1. However, his suggestion was rejected by his siblings.

As private family matters blew into public domain and developed into a soap opera, Lee apologized to Singapores citizens.

I deeply regret that this dispute has affected Singapores reputation and Singaporeans confidence in the government. As your Prime Minister, I apologize to you for this, Lee said in a video statement.

As the eldest of the siblings, it grieves me to think of the anguish that this would have caused our parents if they were still alive, Lee said in the statement.

Also, Lee said he will allow all lawmakers, including the opposition, to examine the issue pertaining to his fathers house, and question the PM during a parliament session on July 3.

I urge all MPs, including the non-PAP MPs, to examine the issues thoroughly and question me and my Cabinet colleagues vigorously. I hope that this full, public airing in parliament will dispel any doubts that have been planted and strengthen confidence in our institutions and our system of government.

PAP refers to the Peoples Action Party, the ruling party in Singapore.

Premier Lee has taken an unusual step of lifting the party whip, allowing all lawmakers to engage in free vote. The unprecedented move is a sign that he fears the family feud, if it is not handled properly, could raise questions about governance in the city-state.

Singapore traditionally imposes tight control on free speech, and all media outlets are directly or indirectly controlled by the government. The restrictive approach has been largely successful over the years. Negative publicity against the government simply wont get covered by the mainstream media.

However, Premier Lees two siblings posted a six-page statement on their Facebook accounts, outlining their grievances against their brother. The spat has been widely discussed on social media and also drew wide coverage in international press. The younger Lees smartly utilized Facebook to get around the government control over mainstream media in Singapore.

As a result, the PM is left with two options, either shutting down Facebook in the city-state or just facing the music.

Competing with Hong Kong for the global financial hub status, Singapore will risk hurting its economy and image if it blocks access to Facebook or other social media. So, thats not a good option.

This could, in fact, be just the beginning. Life for Premier Lee and other top officials may never be the same in the era of social media.

This article appeared in the Hong Kong Economic Journal on June 23

Translation by Julie Zhu with additional reporting

[Chinese version ]

Contact us at [emailprotected]

RC

See the article here:
How social media is changing Singapore politics - EJ Insight

IQALUIT, Nunavut Social media plays a central role in a five-year plan aimed at reducing the number of suicides in Nunavut.

"Just about everyone up here has a Facebook account," said David Lawson, an RCMP officer who is president of the Embrace Life Council, which helped produce the plan along with the Nunavut government, RCMP and other organizations.

Lawson said the plan, outlined Monday at Facebook's Boost Your Community summit in Iqaluit, replaces a temporary one put in place last year.

A summit was held in Iqaluit in May 2016 with representatives from across Nunavut to share ideas on what was working and what else was needed, Lawson said.

"One of the things that we heard during the summit last year is that we need to make sure the work that we're doing reaches more Nunavummiut people of Nunavut and especially the youth, and one of the means that people suggested was social media," Lawson said.

"Collaborating with Facebook for this launch will allow us to reach out to them better."

The Canadian average suicide rate is 11 per 100,000 people, but Nunavut's rate is 117. For Inuit males between 15 and 29, the rate is almost 40 times the national figure.

But Facebook use in the North is also higher than the national average, said Kevin Chan, head of public policy for Facebook Canada.

"They are really using the platform as a primary way to communicate with each other. And we do see that in many communities that are more rural and more remote," said Chan, who was at Monday's summit.

"Up in the North, Facebook really is the platform for communication."

The social media platform already has ways a user can anonymously report a friend's distressing posts, but Chan said Facebook will now provide a link to a Health Canada wellness line that is culturally sensitive to indigenous people.

Lawson said the Nunavut summit last year also noted it was difficult for local groups with solutions to slog through the paperwork and proposals they needed to complete in order to secure funding.

He said the new five-year plan will address that with a fund for programs, large or small, that help prevent suicide anything from mental health services and pre-natal care to early childhood education.

"We've made it so it's easier for them to access, it's easier to do up their proposals," he said.

George Hickes, Nunavut's health minister, said communities know what they need and where they need to focus efforts to prevent suicide. Issues for communities range from lack of economic opportunities to overcrowded housing and the effects of residential schools.

"We're different from other jurisdictions. I'm one generation from being born on the land. My father was born out on the land. So now we're living a semi-urban lifestyle. It's an adjustment in identity," Hickes said.

"Our communities know what they need. We've just got to be able to give them the resources to deliver."

By Rob Drinkwater in Edmonton

More:
Nunavut's suicide strategy includes Facebook, giving communities more control - Times Colonist

We shouldnt have triggered Article 50 at all before agreeing an exit deal

When John Kerr, the British diplomat who drafted Article 50 wrote it, he believed it would only be used by a dictatorial regime that, having had its right to vote on EU decisions suspendedwould then, in high dudgeon, want to storm out.

The process was designed to maximise the leverage of the remaining members of the bloc and disadvantage the departing state. At one stage, it was envisaged that any country not ratifying the Lisbon Treaty would be expelled under the process Article 50 is not intended to get the best Brexit deal or anything like it.

Contrary to Theresa Mays expectation that she would be able to talk to individual member states, Article 50 is designed to ensure that agreement is reached de vous, chez vous, mais sans vous about you, in your own home, but without you, as I wrote before the referendum result.

There is absolutely no reason for a departing nation to use Article 50 before agreement has largely been reached. A full member of the European Union obviously has more leverage than one that is two years away from falling out without a deal. There is no reason to trigger Article 50 until youre good and ready, and the United Kingdoms negotiating team is clearly very far from either being good or ready.

As Dominic Cummings, formerly of Vote Leave, said during the campaign:No one in their right mind would begin a legally defined two-year maximum period to conduct negotiations before they actually knew, roughly speaking, what the process was going to yieldthat would be like putting a gun in your mouth and pulling thetrigger.

If we were going to trigger Article 50, we shouldnt have triggered it when we did

As I wrote before Theresa May triggered Article 50 in March, 2017 is very probably the worst year you could pick to start leaving the European Union. Elections across member states meant the bloc was in a state of flux, and those elections were always going to eat into the time.

May has got lucky in that the French elections didnt result in a tricky co-habitation between a president of one party and a legislature dominated by another, as Emmanuel Macron won the presidency and a majority for his new party, Rpublique en Marche.

It also looks likely that Angela Merkel will clearly win the German elections, meaning that there wont be a prolonged absence of the German government after the vote in September.

But if the British government was determined to put the gun in its own mouth and pull the trigger, it should have waited until after the German elections to do so.

The government should have made a unilateral offer on the rights of EU citizens living in the United Kingdom right away

The rights of the three million people from the European Union in the United Kingdom were a political sweet spot for Britain. We dont have the ability to enforce a cut-off date until we leave the European Union, it wouldnt be right to uproot three million people who have made their lives here, there is no political will to do so more than 80 per cent of the public and a majority of MPs of all parties want to guarantee the rights of EU citizens and as a result there is no plausible leverage to be had by suggesting we wouldnt protect their rights.

If May had, the day she became PM, made a unilateral guarantee and brought forward legislation guaranteeing these rights, it would have bought Britain considerable goodwill as opposed to the exercise of fictional leverage.

Although Britains refusal to accept the EUs proposal on mutually shared rights has worried many EU citizens, the reality is that, because British public opinion and the mood among MPs is so sharply in favour of their right to remain, no one buys that the government wont doit. So it doesnt buy any leverage while an early guarantee in July of last year would have bought Britain credit.

But at least the government hasnt behaved foolishly about money

Despite the pressure on wages caused by the fall in the value of the pound and the slowdown in growth, the United Kingdom is still a large and growing economy that is perfectly well-placed to buy the access it needs to the single market, provided that it doesnt throw its toys out of the pram over paying for its pre-agreed liabilities, and continuing to pay for the parts of EU membership Britain wants to retain, such as cross-border policing activity and research.

So theres that at least.

The rest is here:
Brexit Big Brother is watching: how media moguls control the news - New Statesman

Last Tuesday, a 66-year-old man from Illinois armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle showed up at a baseball field in Virginia to kill GOP lawmakers and others who were practicing for their annual baseball game.

The only police personnel that were at the location were there to provide security for the Republican Whip Rep. Steven Scalise of Louisiana. If they had not been there, there would have been a lot more people shot or killed, according to those who were involved.

Sadly, this is not a new story for Americans to hear. President Obama had to deal with this violence and tragedy several times during his presidency especially the Dec. 14, 2012, slaughter of 20 elementary school children and six educators in Sandy Hook, Conn. That incident was the third deadliest mass shooting by a single person in U.S. history.

Passing a stricter gun control law had failed even after that tragedy in Sandy Hook and the June 12, 2016, killings of 49 people and 58 wounded at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms for all American citizens, which I dont think those who drafted it had any idea how it would play out in todays world.

Its ironic and interesting that Congressman Scalises pro-gun stance has earned him an A- plus rating from the NRA, which is the strongest lobby in Washington. Scalise is a member of Second Congressional Task Force that continues to fight for Second Amendment rights for all Americans. If he recovers from his extensive injuries I wonder if he will change his mind?

My question is: Will this shooting open up a conversation again for stricter gun control laws now that it literally has hit home to its members of Congress? In the weeks and months ahead there will be a lot of talk about this but if history is an indicator of the future, I feel nothing will change. If the killing of school children didnt change and tighten up gun control laws, what hope do we have for any kind of reform? And if Congress did nothing after the shooting of Gabby Giffords, why would we expect anything to change with the shooting of Scalise?

In the weeks and months ahead, law enforcement will find out more information about the shooters motivation to kill Republicans.

I feel that the world is blowing up and that theres no safe place anymore, even here in Aitkin County. The only power we have as voters is to insist on changes in gun control laws through our lawmakers. I know that Minnesotans love to hook and shoot but do we really need AR-15 or AK-47 assault rifles to go deer hunting?

Politics aside, be you Republican or Democrat, we need laws to protect our families from senseless violence. But will this recent act of insanity change anything?

Sadly, lots of talk and no action seem to be the precedent.

View original post here:
Gun control and the potential of slaughter - MessAge Media: Our ... - Aitkin Independent Age

Actor Johnny Depp introduces his film The Libertine at the Glastonbury Festival of Music and Performing Arts on Worthy Farm near the village of Pilton in Somerset, South West England, on Thursday.

AFP/Getty Images

A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.

Voices in conservative media continued to criticize left-wing political rhetoric on Friday. The Federalists Mary Katherine Ham wrote that the events of the past week and the responses to them in the media and the Democratic Party showed that many on the Left and in elite institutions dont want to understand the other half of the country:

On Fox and Friends, Fox host Jeanine Pirro said that the Democratic Party had become a party of hate and destruction. I think its anti-American, she said. I really do. Im sorry. When you talk about, you know, killing the president, doing the stuff theyve been doing, its disgusting.

During the day, audio circulated of Nebraska Democratic Party official Phil Montag saying that he wished that Steve Scalise, who was seriously wounded in the June 14 congressional baseball shooting, was dead. This motherfucker, like his whole job is like to get people, convince Republicans to fucking to kick people off fucking health care, he said. I hate this motherfucker. Im fucking glad he got shot. Montag was fired on Thursday. [Nebraska Democratic Party chairwoman Jane] Kleeb deserves to be recommended for her clear stance against violence in political rhetoric, PJ Medias Tyler ONeil wrote. Both the Left and the Right should denounce it. In the Washington Examiner, Becket Adams criticized Kleeb for saying that rhetoric on both sides of the aisle needed to be toned down. After a politically-motivated assassination attempt carried out by an alleged left-wing fanatic, and after her own people have been caught celebrating and snickering over the near-massacre, Kleeb has the gall to pull the both sides card, he said. We're not sure what's going on in Nebraska, but it sounds like the states Democratic Party is in desperate need of a leadership overhaul.

Montags comments drew attention on Twitter.

So too did a joke Johnny Depp made Thursday night at the British music festival Glastonbury about assassinating Trump. Im not insinuating anythingby the way, this will be in the press and it will be horriblebut when was the last time an actor assassinated a president, he asked. I want to clarify, I am not an actor. I lie for a living. However, it has been a while, and maybe it is time. He later apologized.

The White House released a statement asking Depps colleagues to speak out against violent rhetoric. Those Hollywood elitists wont speak about it, of course, the Daily Wires Amanda Prestigiacomo wrote. Depp is a leftist and apparently advocating something with which they agree.

Multiple outlets applauded the news that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch is the subject of a new probe by the Senate Judiciary Committee over her involvement in the Clinton email investigation. RedStates Susan Wright called the move well overdue:

Other conservatives rejoiced on Twitter:

Read more from the original source:
Today in Conservative Media: The Left Is Still Out of Control - Slate Magazine (blog)