First and foremost, I find it pretty interesting that the Wikipedia page on Mr Philip Yeo has been updated with details of his exchanges both with Elia Diodati AKA AcidFlask AKA Chen Jiahao and other commentators of the blog. Even his exchanges directed to me under my moniker Dr Dee was reproduced in the Wiki page. Seemingly, whoever that has been updating Mr Philip Yeo's wikipedia page is in the know of events in the blogosphere.
Interestingly, the defamatory contents produced in AcidFlask's now defunct blog has been revealed in another blog. Admittedly, I am not in the know of things and hence, I would like to make a conjecture about the events resulting in the purported misinformation in AcidFlask's blog. I understand that my blog has come within the radar of Elia Diodati via Technorati, and perhaps he may shed a little more light on the events involving witness accounts from his university side.
To begin, it takes a tremendous amount of courage for a journalist to write an article implying corruption within a body of the Singapore government if it has not been established in a court of law that the involved are found guilty. After all, the latter prides itself in espousing the values of integrity, service and excellence. The Singapore government has emphasized on the need to fight corruption and basks in the praises of Singapore being a corruption-free country from foreigners. Speaking from my past experience as a journalist/writer of a newsletter, topics alleging corruption on the part of any government organization from hearsay accounts are considered taboo and many of us do well to keep away from them. One would only dare to write about the topic if it has been proven in our Singapore court of law that a high ranking personnel or an organization is guilty of corruption charges. Otherwise, the journalist has to be prepared to walk down Libel Lane.
As I mentioned earlier, I may not be in the know of events at AcidFlask's side but from my conjecture, it could be a case of communication involving multiple personalities that inevitably lead to the misinformation and misrepresentation of A*STAR. It is simple really. You tell Person A, "I went to Vivocity to purchase a Giorgio Armani jacket", and he spreads the message to Person B and so on. When you ask the last Person for the message, there is a high likelihood you get a garbled up and distorted version of your original message. Such misunderstandings are common place actually.
Back to the main issue. It may be that a graduate student has to pay course fees for his postgraduate studies. The fees could be used to fund his postgraduate research, through the purchase of lab materials, consumable materials and graduate course work fees. Thus, it is A*STAR's intention to fund the graduate student's education. Hence, the original message from A*STAR is pay $XXXXX amount of course fees to sponsor a graduate student for his Ph.D. studies, i.e. the intention of A*STAR is to sponsor so and so graduate student by footing the bill for his graduate school. It may be that Person A on the graduate school side acknowledges the acceptance of the student and tells Person B, with $XXXXX amount of money from the course fees, I can buy so and so lab equipment for so and so student's research. Person B then tells Person C with finances coming in from another organization, they managed to purchase so and so lab equipment or they got so and so amount of money for research. Person C then goes on to tell person D, "thanks to A*STAR, we are so and so amount richer", and this process goes on. Already the words from Person D carries an implication that A*STAR is guilty of corrupt practices and a misrepresentation of A*STAR's original stand, when it was A*STAR's original intention to fund a student's graduate school course and not make payouts to enrich research groups within the graduate school. Such misunderstandings are inevitable and that is why I choose to take a more light-hearted view of AcidFlask's circumstances even in light of the revelations of the defamatory content made in his blog. Now Ludwig Wittgenstein's treatise on the Language Game is being vindicated. When we communicate, we shouldn't be adding additional words.......
The lesson learnt is that a third or fourth hand narration is no longer accurate. My usual practice during my days as a writer is to reject anything beyond a second hand narrative account. Secondly, I feel that the awareness of Libel laws is paramount. A chemistry major friend of mine happened to be following the AcidFlask episode told me it's a tad unfair for someone who reproduces a libelous comment to be implicated for libel. That is the the nature of Libel laws was my resigned reply. A news daily carrying an interview containing libelous contents can be hauled into the court together with the interviewees by plaintiffs. This fear of being implicated has always played at the back of my mind when I conducted interviews and thankfully, nothing has happened so far. As it is, not all of us are in the know of the technicalities of Libel Law and I think we should cut AcidFlask some slack.
There was another interesting comment by a certain Daniel on Aaron Ng's blog on the enforcement of Singapore courts' ruling in America. I know of a litigation suit brought by an American on a Singaporean in an American court, the other way round. The American judge told him it may be difficult to enforce the ruling in Singapore because Singapore isn't a signatory to the Hague Convention. Thus, I am not sure if it is possible to be able to enforce the rulings of Singaporean courts in American soil given the fact that Singapore isn't a signatory to the Hague Convention.
Elia Diodati, the AcidFlask reincarnate has reproduced some comments on my previous article on Hegelian dialetic. He cited Arthur Schopenhauer, one of Hegel's opponents. Admittedly, Schopenhauer has raised some criticisms of Hegel that deserve some merit. I cannot disagree with Schopenhauer's stand that a dialectical exchange may take place far away from the truth and may take place for no other purpose than to get the better of your opponent using certain strategems in debate. I would readily admit that Hegel's work is filled with jargons, which makes reading extremely difficult. A research on Hegel's work is equivalent to a Philosophiæ Doctor work in Philosophy though. However, my view is that a dialetical exchange can take place between two polemic truths. Think of it as a debate between a relativity theorist and a quantum physicist. Perhaps, the Grand Unified Theory will address both camps as a possible synthesis, who knows? However, that being said, I am also a big fan of Arthur Schopenhauer's work. One of the western philosophers to be influenced by Buddhism, an eastern religion, he introduced elements of Buddhism into western philosophy. A case of synthesis between two worlds? An irony for a GWF Hegel critic. Nonetheless, I love citing the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche whenever I encounter campus evangelists.
Citations
1) Friedrich Nietzsche. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
2) Arthur Schopenhauer. Art of controversy. http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controversy/
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