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.