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The Citizen, 1994-06-22, Page 5THE CITIZEN WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 1994. PAGE 5. (2 Arthur Black You don’t want to go to jail in Singapore Punishment is a sort of medicine Aristotle Thinking of visiting Singapore some day? Maybe taking the kids along? Here's a couple of no-no's you may want to bring to their attention before you take off for a day's sightseeing. Do not drop litter. Do not feed the pigeons. Do not spit on the sidewalk. Do not eat while driving. Do not pick the flowers. Do not chew gum. And lest your kids think these are just wishful guidelines like the DON'T WALK signs at Canadian stoplights, you might want to tell them that the fine for, saying, chewing gum or feeding pigeons in Singapore is a flat $1,000. No court-appointed lawyer. No case workers or appeals. Just a thousand bucks - pay up or go to gail. And you really don't want to go to jail in Singapore. Well, what do you expect? Singapore is not an advanced, sophisticated nation like Canada. It's a tight-sphinctered police state of two million souls crammed onto an island not much bigger than some Saskatchewan ^International Scene By Raymond Canon Fair trade, not free trade It is often interesting to note whai the same word means in different parts of the world. For years we used to joke about what the Russians meant by the expression "freedom loving people" when it was obvious that the people in question were anything but free. What I am going to write about today is far closer to home since it involves the United States. The Americans have talked a great deal about "free trade" and have even signed two agreements, one with Canada and one with Canada and Mexico, that are purported to work toward free trade and undoubtedly will, but not at the pace that some people think. It appears now, that when the Americans talk about free trade, they frequently mean "fair trade." Fair, that is, to the United States but not to anybody else. The Clinton Administration has embarked on what can only be called "American First" campaign to expand the level of exports from the U.S. and the same administration is prepared to go to almost any length to push their own interests. Inevitably some of this rubs off on Canada. Let's look at one of those first. Washington has come out in full support of AT & T for a contract in Saudi Arabia said to be in the neighbourhood of $2 billion. It has refused to do the same for the large U.S. subsidiary of Northern Telecom, even though all the work would be done at plants in the U.S. Why? The answer is every obvious; AT & T is U.S. owned while Northern Telecom, as many readers know, has its head office in Canada. Northern Telecom has made a great wheat farms and surrounded by potentially hostile neighbours. That makes for a nervous government. Nervous about a lot of things. Drugs for instance. A few years ago heroin started to show up in Singapore. The government came up with a very simple solution: billboards. Billboards all over Singapore. You can see them when you get off the plane. The billboards say simply: WARNING: DEATH FOR DRUG DEALERS UNDER SINGAPORE LAW. They mean it, too. Get caught dealing dope in Singapore and all the Melvin Bellis and Eddie Greenspoons in the world will not come between you and your date with the Singapore hangman. And don't expect special attention just because you carry a passport identifying you as a privileged citizen of a progressive Western country. Michael Fay found that out last month. Fay is the American kid who went on a rampage in downtown Singapore, spray-painting parked cars, and slinging eggs and bricks around. The Singapore courts sentenced him to five lashes. Which in Singapore, is more than enough. They use a rattan cane on the bare buttocks, wielded by a martial arts expert. Lashees usually lose consciousness after the first couple of strokes. Predictably, many Americans objected to the harsh penalty. Boys will be boys, they said. Even President Clinton suggested that the punishment was out of proportion to the crime. effort to hide its Canadian identity; if you have ever seen any of its ads in the U.S., you will note that there is no mention whatsoever of its Canadian origin. Another that comes to mind is the question of Canadian drum wheat. The Clinton administration has come to the conclusion, helped on by complaining U.S. farmers, that too much of the above wheat has been shipped to the U.S. from Canada and they have been trying to put a stop to it. From where I sit, it appears that the increased Canadian shipments are due to a shortage of the wheat in the U.S. since it is the kind of wheat that is favoured by pasta makers. The Americans were so busy pushing their wheat elsewhere that they didn't realize there was a shortage of durum wheat until the price started to rise. They then complained that the increased wheat shipments from Canada were causing the cost of the federal government's price support program to rise. A panel appointed to examine the situation and to arrive at a decision whether the Canadian wheat was unfairly subsidized brought forth criticism from the American chairman that the U.S. administration's first presentation had very little of any economic content; it appeared, on the contrary, to be mainly a political diatribe and the chairman admitted he had a hard time trying to figure out what the whole claim was all about. One of the reasons I have been in support of some free trade agreement with the U.S. is that free trade really does work (if you let it) and just as important, I have long realized that the Americans were quite prepared to preach one doctrine and practise another when it suited them. The above two examples are proof of this but, under the free trade agreement, we do at least have dispute mechanism which can solve such problems and to date the Canadians have won most of them. Singapore went ahead and lashed. Barbaric? Some folks think so. On the other hand, political corruption is virtually unheard of in Singapore. The streets are spotless and utterly safe to walk on at any hour (unless Michael Fay's about). There are no slums and the people of Singapore enjoy a health care system that would bring tears to the eyes of Tommy Douglas. As for crime, Singapore must be one of the few countries in the world that has no - repeat, no - hard drug problem. Other crimes? Vandalism, robbery and rape are all "caneable offenses. There hasn't been a bank robbery in years. Perhaps that's why Singapore hasn't had to increase the size of its police force since 1967. Meanwhile, Michael Fay hails from a country where John Wayne Gacy, who murdered 33 kids, was recently put to death by injection, 13 years after he was found guilty. Thirteen years. That's more time than some of his victims had on the planet. And here in Canada taxpayers still pick up the tab for a piece of human flotsam named Clifford Olsen, a serial child killer who sits in a prison cell with a TV and a computer and a telephone on which he chats with anyone who'll accept his calls. So whose system is better - Singapore's or ours? Well, it's hard to deal in absolutes, but let me leave you with one. I am absolutely sure that if Michael Fay ever goes on a vandalizing binge again, it won't be in Singapore. Can you imagine what would happen if we did not have any such mechanisms? All this, however, is a gentle breeze compared with what the Americans have been trying to do to the Japanese. The Japanese do protect their domestic markets; any Canadian firm that does business there can attest to that. However what the Americans are trying to do to Japan is little short of war. A senior American official has stated that support for U.S. companies, in Japan and elsewhere, will go beyond a representation by an ambassador to major efforts "involving everything from financing to foreign policy pressure." There has even been talk of establishing an export "war room" which is to mount intensive campaigns to support U.S. companies to get major contracts in such things as infrastructure projects, military sales, telecommunications systems, aircraft and energy programs which are worth hundreds of billions of dollars. A number of countries have been targetted, 12 in all, which the Clinton administration calls "Big Emerging Markets". It should be remembered, however, that the Americans frequently are guilty of overkill and some of this intense effort may backfire. However, it does emphasize the necessity of Canada mounting its own export promotions where it feels it has a good chance of selling goods or services. It is all adding up to a hot time. Letters Continued from page 4 If Pastor Came is so positive about his beliefs on Secular Humanists, then maybe he could enlighten us as to his reasoning and supply some sort of evidence to support his claims in a future columns. I would be interested in seeing it. D. Trollope. The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp 1 Strutting an impossible ideal Last week I went to Stratford Festival to see Cyrano de Bergerac, the man with a nose you could shade yourself beneath. While his physical appearance is marred, Cyrano is a swashbuckling romantic, a Renaissance hero, who is as natural reciting poetry as he is challenging 100 swordsmen. Charming and exciting it takes very little time before his facial flaw becomes a nonentity. To us, that is, but not to de Bergerac, though, who, like many others, suffers from the unkind remarks of others. As Colm Feore, the actor who portrays the man said in an interview recently, "...you just think differently if you've always been laughed at; if you've always been made fun of, if you've always been the butt of everyone's joke." A good number of us lowly mortals can empathize, at least to some degree, with de Bergerac. Leaving the theatre I overhead a woman remarking to her companion that it was easy to understand his pain. "To be made to feel ugly and think you aren't worthy of the same sort of happiness as others because you aren't beautiful must be terrible," she said. The story of de Bergerac could never have been written today. He'd have had his proboscis bobbed in short order. He'd have had to, because it's hard enough for the average looking gal or guy to get noticed anymore, let alone someone with a physical impediment such as his. We are, after all, living in a society where teenage girls are starving themselves, women are undergoing painful and potentially dangerous plastic surgery, and men are..., shall we say 'extending' themselves, all in the name of the body beautiful. I think it's pathetic that there are people accepting artificiality at face value. A young man was commenting on a television show known only for its actors' Barbie and Ken physiques. (In the 70s they called them jiggle shows, but being as plastic doesn't jiggle, they've dropped that, I guess) "You have no problem admiring someone with a body bought and paid for?" I asked. "It doesn't bother you in the least that this woman struts an ideal that is impossible for the majority of young women to live up to?" I knew he had missed the point, however, when his reponse was, "You're jealous." Sorry, big guy! I don't feel threatened by inflatable dolls. It does irk me though that they have so much money to throw around. Honestly, it really concerns me for the younger people. A young girl said recently that it is really frustrating because guys don't care if anything is real anymore as long as it's perfect. "There’s no such thing as natural beauty anymore; it wouldn't meet the expectations." For people like Cyrano de Bergerac plastic surgery would have been a blessing. For people who are disfigured, who are stared at or ridiculed, it makes sense. But to use it frivilously is to me a bit shallow. It's bad enough that most of us everyday people don't have the opportunity to spend our days in a gymnasium working away fat, honing and toning muscle. But even if we did we couldn't keep up because the people we see every day on the screens and in the magazines have the bucks to fix what the exercise won't with a nip and a tuck. Physically we must realize we can't hope to be iheir equals. We'll have to rely instead on making do with what we've got, which is usually a personality that matches our appearance — honest and natural.