East Vs West

[DJ-Jerakai]

OK. I'm not racist. Most of my friends are Asian. And for the most part I enjoy Asian culture. And of course, the west isn't perfect. But here we go.

I'm Australian, I come from Melbourne originally, been in Australia for my whole life, but recently I travelled to Singapore for a working holiday and I've been here for about 4 months.
Now this is where my gripe begins.

Everything over here is fucked!
The laws are crazy, the censorship is ridiculous, you can't do anything!
The legal age of majority is 21. Until then the child is under complete authority of the parent. 21!
This has lead to widespread child abuse, both physical and mental and even sometimes sexual.
Youth suicide is high. Children can't talk to their teachers about it because the teachers are bound by law to tell the parents... so thats a dead end.

As to sex itself, oral sex and anal sex are considered unnatural and outlawed here. I mean, wtf?!
I'm straight as can be, but I have both bi-sexual and gay friends and what are they supposed to do in a nation like this?
Its like they're outlawing homosexuality.
In primary school students are abused by teachers for being to fat.
This is also part of the legal curriculum.

Different races are forced to live on the same levels of apartment blocks. So you can never have a storey of all Chinese or all Indians. Everything here is based on race and religion.
Sometimes even salaries! For example caucasian expatriates get paid up to 5 times as much as indian expatriates.
Again this is another law.

They have forced conscription here.
They still have the death penalty.
If you are a Singaporean citizen you can't have citizenship in another country unless you give up your Singaporean citizenship.
There is nothing "anti-singaporean" in the media here. Only good news about the government. All propaganda.
No media freedom.

Now, lee kwan yu did a lot for bringing Singapore up out of the swapland it used to be and turning it into asias greatest economic success.
But c'mon!
Its time Singapore matured as a nation and had a good hard look at itself.

Comments?

[Istentelen]

You can haste a nations economyc growth, but you can't haste it's social development. It requires generations to remove the ancient, ultraconservative thoughts from the peoples mind. Recently industrialized countries, wich had absolute monarchy even 100 years ago simply can't have the same developed democracy as the countries wich have democracy since centuries.

[qygibo]

I would say to that argument about their perceived lack of rights as this: I recall reading a text for my Japanese history class (I don't recall the author or title, and I read it as a scanned text online) that noted just this sort of phenomena; and it was noted how what we perceive as necessary rights is not necessarily what Asians would perceive as necessary rights. Our cultures are different in that in the West, we're individualistic, whereas in Asian countries they are more group oriented, and thus the individual is not as important as the group.

[Memorize]

Because it's so horrible that they have the death penalty while giving out good news about themselves.

or you can be like the US media and ONLY report the horrible if you like, causing the world to hate you.

But other than that, it makes me laugh at how people in the US, briatain, france complain about the "freedoms" they don't recieve.

[SyntheticTacos]

It could be worse. :( About the death penalty thing, I would ask you though.... is it much more humane to make someone spend their life in prison? A Singaporean prison at that!

it's pretty bad but a lotta western countries have some of the problems you described too, such as the amount of censorship (not as extreme but it's still there) and retarded sexuality laws (living in the bible belt region of the U.S.; I would know. @_@) But you could be living in Ethiopia, which has more people than Egypt, or Iran, or France, or the U.K..... and still manages to be one of the poorest places to be on Earth, with severe civil rights problems.

[DJ-Jerakai]

At 1/13/07 01:10 PM, SyntheticTacos wrote: It could be worse. :( About the death penalty thing, I would ask you though.... is it much more humane to make someone spend their life in prison? A Singaporean prison at that!

it's pretty bad but a lotta western countries have some of the problems you described too, such as the amount of censorship (not as extreme but it's still there) and retarded sexuality laws (living in the bible belt region of the U.S.; I would know. @_@) But you could be living in Ethiopia, which has more people than Egypt, or Iran, or France, or the U.K..... and still manages to be one of the poorest places to be on Earth, with severe civil rights problems.

What the hell are your trying to say?
As to the death penalty... are you fucking kidding me?

It is NEVER acceptable. The age old example of the man who recieved a full pardon 10 minutes to late speaks aloud for that.
Furthermore its just too final and ultimate.

Also Singaporean prisons aren't all that bad.

But its ridiculous.
You get the death penalty for drug use or drug dealing, but if you are a 40 year old indian man with an arranged marriage to a 14 year old girl and you happen to rape her completely against her will, there is no legal penalty at all.

Its culture gone mad.

[zzzzd]

Just travel to English speaking countries so you don't get the culture shock.

[qygibo]

It's also a culture that will gradually change with US influence. Take Japan. Up until 1976, for instance, prostitution used to be fully legal. After 1976, thanks to the US and other Western nations pushing for it, Japan banned prostitution. The same similar thing could happen with Singapore and other nations.

[qygibo]

At 1/15/07 01:53 PM, Mercator wrote: East would own us with sheer numbers and chicken fried rice.

Not really. Having superior numbers means nothing without the training and technology to back it up. Take the Opium Wars--China had several times more boats and troops than the British, and the British kicked their asses shamefully hard. Why? The British had superior boat technology while the Chinese boats, while more plentiful, were painfully out of date.

[tawc]

At 1/15/07 02:10 PM, qygibo wrote:

At 1/15/07 01:53 PM, Mercator wrote: East would own us with sheer numbers and chicken fried rice.

Not really. Having superior numbers means nothing without the training and technology to back it up. Take the Opium Wars--China had several times more boats and troops than the British, and the British kicked their asses shamefully hard. Why? The British had superior boat technology while the Chinese boats, while more plentiful, were painfully out of date.

The Korean war is a more modern example.
Howether china will soon not only be a huge army but a high tech army.

[Camarohusky]

At 1/15/07 02:54 PM, tawc wrote: The Korean war is a more modern example.
Howether china will soon not only be a huge army but a high tech army.

No. It wasn't.

It ended up being a stale mate between the world's most high tech army and the worlds largest army.

[Imperator]

At 1/15/07 05:30 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 1/15/07 02:54 PM, tawc wrote: The Korean war is a more modern example.
Howether china will soon not only be a huge army but a high tech army.

No. It wasn't.

It ended up being a stale mate between the world's most high tech army and the worlds largest army.

First Gulf War then.

Korean war is fine I think. Truman wanted it to be a limited war to avoid WWIII, so our objective was not to conquer NK and China, but to preserve the peace. Mission Complete I believe....

US casualties: 33,000
NK casualties: 520,000
Chinese casualties: 900,000 (est.)

Vietnam would be better. Wki:
US dead: 58,000
NVA dead: 1,100,000

Vietnam was failed, we pulled out too early to stop NV from taking SV (which was our goal). Based on casualties, we could have (arguably did) annihilated the NVA.

And China is modernizing its army. Modernizing means reduction, since they can't support such as large army at high tech prices. Last I heard it was below the 2 mil line?

Anyways, I think this list is friggin SCARY!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countrie s_by_number_of_total_troops
Iran LEADS? And India and Russia have more total troops?

Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan have more troops than Israel (ranked 20). Also scary.

[cellardoor6]

At 1/16/07 02:11 AM, Imperator wrote:

Anyways, I think this list is friggin SCARY!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countrie s_by_number_of_total_troops
Iran LEADS? And India and Russia have more total troops?

Well with Iran that included paramilitary groups such as the Revolutionary guard that consists of alot of poorly trained human waves and suicide bombers.

Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan have more troops than Israel (ranked 20). Also scary.

Ok well first of all, you can't really judge the strength of a military on troop levels only. Israel does have a relatively small military, yet the US gives them the latest technology that we don't even give to NATO. Israel has a very organized, high-tech communications system, GPS, and has the latest American radars, missiles and so forth. They have a very well coordinated system.

Just like in the US military, even at the lowest level of command, the squad, the IDF has direct communications to their airforce pilots. This gives them massive airpower (consisting of superior American jets) on tap. This makes a much smaller force many times more powerful than a much larger force. Its called a force multiplier.

The good thing about the US is not only is the US vastly superior in technique, technology, firepower, intelligence, over-watch, but the US also has huge military, all equipped very well (except for reserves in some cases).

Hell, even the Marine Corps which only gets a small fraction of yearly US military spending is larger, and arguably better equipped, and more capable than the British Royal Army. And just the Marine Corps has more strike aircraft (that are vastly superior) than China does.

Now the only real threat to the west (specifically the US) is Russia and China. And Russia is fucking degrading into shit in terms of military proficiency. Their private markets make decent equipment, yet their government can't afford to buy it for their own troops, they just sell it to other countries. And China maybe be taking steps to upgrade their technology, but they are still lightyears behind the US, and most of their troops are illiterate peasant conscripts.

[SmilezRoyale]

I blame mamalizim.

[DJ-Jerakai]

You guys just read the topic "East Vs West" and took it to a full on literal Militaristic meaning didn't you.

I did mean it in a sense of styles of governance but this has become far more interesting.

Militarily it all boils down to one thing... Nukes.

And in that regard, the west wins hands down.